


Itamidome - 痛み止め (Painkiller)

by Benten



Series: A Genius' Journey [4]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Adult Content, Adulthood, Aged-Up Character(s), Breaking Up & Making Up, Cheating, Consensual Sex, Italian Character(s), Italiano | Italian, Italy, Japan, Japanese National Team, Marriage, Medical Professionals, Multi, Music, Musicians, Post-Canon, Pro Volleyball Player Kageyama Tobio, Showbiz Era, fashion - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-01-26 18:11:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 41,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12563244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Benten/pseuds/Benten
Summary: Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.CATULLUSAdult life is supposed to be the life of well grown and adapted people.We could only wish.And what would a stubborn and egocentric King wish for, after all?Let's follow him in his foreseeable and quite complex future.





	1. Antifact

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Azalea Flower Meaning** :
> 
> \- Remembering your home with fondness or wishing to return to it  
> \- Taking care of yourself and your family  
> \- Temperance   
> \- Passion that is still developing and fragile  
> \- Elegance and wealth  
> \- Femininity and feminine beauty  
> \- Abundance, especially of beauty or intelligence  
> \- A death threat – only when sent in a black vase

“Kageyama, it’s your turn for the check…”

“Alright. I’m gonna go now.”

_Sounds of steps along a corridor. Pause. Sound of an elevator coming to its stage. Beeping. Sound of sliding door opening. Chattering. Bracelets clenching. Laughs. Sounds of steps emptying the elevator. Elevator moving up. Elevator stopping. Single person’s steps moving. Stopping. Sounds of a door knocked over. Single person’s steps moving; briefly stopping. Sound of a door closing._

“Oh, Tobio. Sit down and give me your pulse…”

_Sound of a weighting body sitting on a leather sofa. Sound of a pen posed on a glassy table. Sound of steps of somebody wearing medical clogs._

“Are you sure you could handle it, _Mr. Doctor_?”

_Faint sound of somebody raising up from an expensive leather sofa._

“What… are you… doing?”

“Mmhhh… I don’t know… the usual?”

“Stop it… they might come…in…”

“Don't think so. I am the last listed for today. And you know it because you made it so, _Oikawa San_ …”

“Tobio… stop it… you… can't do it now…”

 _Breathy murmurs. Sounds of steps rolling uneven. Whispers._

“Oh, I sure can instead… I am not the one married here, am I?”

“The hell, Tobio… let me… breath…”

“You never like it that way…”

_Sounds of body pinned to a wall. Sounds of belts touching floor. Moaning. Faint and suppressed screams. Sounds of wet flesh bumping. Sound of a glass shattering on ground. Pleasure cries. Suffocate begging._

_Unrestrained moan and scream._

_Heavy panting._

_Silence._

_Silence._

_Silence._

_Sounds of small talks in small voices. Sound of naked steps. Sound of weighting bodies moving on a couch._

_Silence._

_Sounds of prolonged making out._

 

“So… you’ve decided you're going abroad?”

“Yeah.”

“Mmh.”

“I think I’ll accept the offer from Italy. It's warmer there. And every Japanese do love Italy don't we?”

“You’ll take ages to learn Italian though.”

“Probably.”

“So… I suppose we'll see each other… only at National Camps… from now on.”

“Probably.”

“Can you afford to miss me for such a long time, Tobio?”

“See, Tooru… this we have… after all it’s like sometimes I miss you even when we are like this… even in the aftermath of sex, or even during it… sometimes you're not really here anyway.”

“What the hell… it ain't true… you don't understand what I am suffering in this…”

“Whatever.”

“Don’t dare whatever-ing me! You don’t… you must know when we’re like this… when we are together like this… these are the only times when I am truly happy…”

_Sounds of naked steps. Sound of metallic objects being lifted. Sounds of shoes being lifted and put back on the ground._

“It's time for me to go anyway. They're starting to wonder where I am, for sure…”

“Stay. Just a little more. Hold me…”

“I can't. Gotta go. See you, Tooru. Say hi to Nanako from me.”

“Age is making you crueler and crueler…”

_Sound of stopping steps._

“Says the one who married a woman the month after he declared his undying love to a man.”

_Sounds of rapid small naked steps._

“Says the man who told the other he couldn't understand what love is.”

_Silence._

_Silence._

_Sounds of steps. Sounds of a closing door._

_Silence._


	2. Flying Hero

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Iris Flower Meaning**  
>  The iris means different things to different people and cultures, but it's almost always associated with royalty. 
> 
> Some of its most common meanings are:  
> • Royalty  
> • Faith  
> • Wisdom  
> • Hope  
> • Valor
> 
> It is also associated with the concept of dedication and friendship.
> 
> Have you and your friend weathered a lot of challenges together and stuck with each other through it all? Celebrate your dedication with a single eye-catching iris. The slender stem and bold bloom also symbolizes strength and valor, making it a great gift for someone who stood up for you or fought for your rights.

Airports in the late evening were one of the locations he was feeling more stranded at. Big airports then never had been his thing at all, despite how often he had trained himself at managing being into one with.  
With a little puffing of his breath, Kageyama controlled his watch.

“How can he be constantly late?”

Keeping an eye on his trolley, he shrugged into himself and tried to maintain his stance and posture as forgettable as he could.  
He was dressed elegantly but anonymously and to conceit his height he was sitting on his waiting room seat in a corner of the VIP area, which he hated to be allowed at with energy, but which was the only place he could stay for a while without being harassed by unwanted people.  
On his head, to take off sight his all so famous mane which was so luscious one of his most notable sponsors was Pantene since a few years already, he had a New York Yankees baseball cap, worn and discolored, a souvenir of the first training camp he had in the town at the time of his first college year.  
He was immobile and at fast sight he could have seemed even inhuman, like one of those creepy androids Japan was filled with since Osaka head chief of University Robotics Department had unleashed them into society for experimenting their social adaptability on the wake of Tokyo Olympics three years before.  
But unlike androids, there was something very human he couldn't cancel nor disguise well enough to make it unnoticeable.

“Excuse me, Sir…”

A tiny girly voice on his right was clearly demanding his attention.  
Upset but with no other choices given but checking on the voice itself, Kageyama turned his head, still merely and still keeping it very collected and closed as only the lower part of his face could seem alive under the bangs and the cap, and meeting the shape who possessed the tiny expectant voice he simply asked what she was looking for.

“You are the volleyball player who has the Flying Hero scent out, aren’t you? My father has the same scent. It's the best ever… and you seem really the guy in magazines too… are you?”

She was looking up to him, eyes wide and an open smile, her waving hair barely kept behind her forehead by an array of pink clips, and she was keeping her arms and hands at the sides of her body, feet perfectly aligned, like a little ballerina waiting for a step counting.  
She looked adorable.

“You may be mistaken, little lady…”

And while speaking to her, he inadvertently raised his head enough to clearly show his eyes:

“… you may have erroneously thought of me like someone I am not…”

But the girl shook her head, and her eyes went quickly all over his face. Then she tilted fully forward, squeezing her eyes and making her bright smile even wider.

“Nah nah. You are him. You have the most beautiful eyes and the deepest, most beautiful voice ever. And I already told all of my friends when I grow up you will be one of my husbands!”

Kageyama looked at her bewitched:

“ _O… one?_ ”

The girl kept smiling. She was the epitome of cuteness.

“Well yes. You are very beautiful and awesome but so are some others I want to marry. I have decided you will be my number three. Is it okay with you?”

She was looking very serious.  
Kageyama couldn't avoid a single chuckle. But he put his hand over his mouth to suppress it enough to not displease his little fan and tentative wife.

“Mister… excuse her please…”

A grown up voice came at him, and he saw hands of an adult taking the little girl up reproachingly.

“Sayako… what are you doing? How many times do we have to tell you not to bother people in the waiting rooms?”

From under his cap he had replaced well enough to cover his features a bit more, Kageyama was to try to dismiss the situation enough to save his admirer, but he couldn't be as fast as her:

“Dad, please don't interrupt us… see? We were deciding he’s going to be my third husband!”

At that he couldn't stop his laugh.  
A silver, lovely laugh.  
It wasn't like in the commercial his manager had forced him to act out.  
It was a bursting, happy sound where his usually deep voice would jump higher enough to become celebrating and rare.  
The little girl squealed in amazement.

“Dad look! It's my volleyball husband!”

Kageyama's will to dismiss his presence had gone in front of such a devoted, brave trooper.  
Her dad was in disbelief.  
And incredibly embarrassed.

“Ka… Kageyama Sama!”

Taking his daughter behind himself despite her denials, he bowed deeply to ask for forgiveness and comprehension.

“Please excuse us for causing you trouble! We are… great fans of yours. Please believe we wouldn't have ever wanted to cause you any discontent… Sayako!”

The girl appeared from behind her dad, eyes watering, pre-sensing a huge punishment was in line after that break.

“Sayako… now apologize and ask for Kageyama Sama’s undeserved pardon. Bend!”

The little girl, fighting tears, bent. Her long hair almost touching ground. But the voice was hard to let out. She was trying her best, a face fully red, tiny fists clenching.

“There, there… she doesn't have to apologize…”

Kageyama went down crunching so that he could be more at her level, sitting on knees almost.

“Sayako… is this your name?”

The little girl couldn't raise her face, but tears were clearly streaming down her cheeks. She nodded.

“You are the cutest thing I have seen in weeks. And I thank you for your support. And I hope in the name of it” and he looked up at Sayako’s father who was a number of different shades of pink “you are not grounded for anything which has happened here. Can I hope it will be so… Mr….?”

“Sakaki. Tomohiro… Sakaki.”

Kageyama raised back up on his feet, offering his hand to the bewildered man.

“Sakaki San, please… spare Sayako for this. She never did anything I could call a bother. But… Sayako chan?”

The girl could then afford to look back up sighing and with red eyes, after the tears streaming had stopped. Kageyama smiled tenderly at her and she gulped, then, all embarrassed from that emotion, she shielded a bit behind her father’s leg.

“Y… yes?”

“I may be okay with becoming a future husband for you…but never if I have to share the title. You know… marriage is a serious thing. There must be… only _one_ husband for you, once you have decided you want to marry… am I right?”

Sayako had sparkling eyes. Her father had those, too. Both nodded at him like they were questioned in a teaching class, and Sayako slowly put herself back to the front. Reaching her hands out to Kageyama she asked for a lift. Her father was about to stop her, but he underestimated the swiftness of an Olympic Volley medalist. In less than a second, a sight to behold, Kageyama had his arms full of love.  
Sayako plastered a big fat kiss on his cheek and triumphantly looking at her father she stated:

“This is going to be my only husband daddy. Please say yes to us!”

Kageyama laughed once more, and placed Sayako back in the embrace of her father, who hadn't energy to speak anymore and all he could do were faces of embarrassment from now and then. He looked like he was a man of a business position. A middle aged, well kept man dressed impeccably and with beautiful hands. Sayako didn't much resemble him though so Kageyama thought her mother had to be a beauty.

“Kageyama!!! Sorry… sorry if I am late!”

His manager.  
A person allergic to manners.  
A person who would scream himself into a conversation, just that way.  
A person with a long list of defects, among which the inability of being punctual was not even the worst one, and a person he couldn't avoid to disagree with most of times.  
Still, the only manager he could have accepted to have anyway.

“You… you are… certainly the worst. Can't you read situations for once?”

The young man looked around. The man with the girl in his arm seemed totally incapable to frame those happenings and was looking at him like he were a barbarian or something.

“Sorry for I have intruded, Sir. But we have to move. And…” this time he went looking at Kageyama “… our flight to Italy has been rearranged. So we have to quickly move to another gate, right now…”

Sayako looked at Kageyama:

“Italy?”

Kageyama patted her head with affection.

“Yes, Italy. I am going to play there for a while, little princess. Can't I?”

Sayako looked pensive. She dived into her father’s embrace for a minute, then looking back at Kageyama said:

“No, it’s okay. For a while… it's okay. I can still see you when you're on television and online… and when you come back I will be older, so I can move in with you…”

The face of Kageyama's manager changed into a question mark.

“Sayako, stop… please. And… Kageyama Sama… let me wish you the best for your incoming adventure in Italy. We will follow you closely even there. Be the pride of Japan once again.”

“Our flying hero! Our emblem!” Added Sayako, chanting along the jingle of the perfume which had that name. Kageyama was feeling awkward any time people would mention that lyric or perform it thinking he was happy about it. He found it dreadful and cheesy and terribly obvious, but everybody else seemed to love it so he had long lost his hope to change anything about it.

“Oh… you sing it good little lady… do you like the scent too?”

Sayako took a look at the young man questioning her, like he was trying to make fun of her:

“Well of course. It's the best scent ever. I borrow it from dad when he isn't around… but who are you? You are strange.”

The man laughed soundly, and with jubilant expression, a face open and always smiling, he said to her that he was the one and only manager of the great Kageyama Tobio. It had zero effect on the girl though, and she completely ignored him from that point, focusing back on her love who was ready to move and say goodbye.

“So… if you leave… take this as a loving pledge…”

Sayako took off her head her biggest and most sparkling pin, and offered it to a bemused Kageyama.

“Ohhh… thank you, Sayako. But are you sure you want to give it to me? It was so beautiful in your hair… and I can't keep it in mine, you know…”

“Why not? Your hair is long as well, sometimes I wonder how can you see well from under it…”

“You know… I haven't changed hairstyle once in my life… I am not for changing it either in the future but if I will ever think of it, I promise I will certainly use your pin. Can this work for you?”

Sayako smiled, and enthusiastically nodded.

“Now excuse us, but we have to move. It had been wonderful to meet you. Take care and don't make your father worry again, ok?”

Sayako nodded again, while her father was ready to bow in acknowledgement and thankfulness once more.

“Have a good trip to Shangai then, and thank you for being such kind fans. I never realize people actually do care about what I do until I meet people as nice as you. It's comforting, but know that it's also a big responsibility which I will never take lightly.”

Sayako looked at him again. She seemed curious and reasoning.

“You look so serious now. Wow. You look like my teacher.”

“Is it bad?”

“No… but when I see you in magazines or commercials, and especially on your social posts… you are rarely this serious…”

Kageyama internally screamed. He hated how his social appearance had so little of his inputs at all displaying actually. He briefly glared at the true responsible of this shift of style, whom was trying to act nonchalantly at Sayako’s words.

“So you don't like this side of me?”

Sayako thought about it, by looking deeply at Kageyama's face. She was too cute for words.

“I think I do like it a lot instead. It seems to fit you… more?”

“What do you mean?”

Sayako tried to gesture her explanation with motions in addition to her wording choice which was quite wide for such a little girl:

“When you play games you look so beautiful, like you take everything and make everything and control everything. Dad always says your role is the most important in a game, so I think of you as a king. And kings… kings don't smile much, do they?”

Kageyama fondly asked back:

“I wouldn't know… do they?”

Keeping gesturing, Sayako went on:

“Well, important people… they seem to smile way less than normal people do. I have seen this when dad meets other gents for work. So I guess when you are important you don't have much time to smile at all. And Kings must be on top of important people right? So… I get it's normal if you are very serious too… but you don't have to worry. Even serious you are still beautiful so I will keep wanting you as my husband. Don't be sad ok?”

Kageyama moved nearer to the girl, still in her dad’s arms, and gently caressed her on her head.

“Good. Then I can fly to Italy with a lighter heart, knowing how my future wife's fine with my grumpy side. Goodbye, Sayako chan. Goodbye, Sakaki San. May your life always gift you with the things you want the most.”

And taking after his manager, who had already started to move outside the VIP lobby, waving hands in salutation Kageyama moved to the newly assigned gate.

“So you have given yourself finally to an offering wife? Sure she's very cute… maybe a bit on the young side tho?”

“Shut up. This would have never happened without that idiot commercial jingle anyway…”

“That idiot jingle has even a version which has cracked music charts you know…”

“That jingle gives me headaches anytime I hear even a note out of it…”

“Whatever. It works. And everybody beside you loves it. That's it. Surrender…”

Kageyama snorted. In the end he knew his life could never work as good as it was working without that loud, intense, bright and stupidly fantastic person by his side.

“Whatever. But have you heard? The serious side of me could work well too. So please stop to make my socials look like I am somebody like you all the times…”

“Somebody like me?”

“Yeah… all those… motivational lines… all the posts about being eager to show the world what I can do… the posts where it seems like I care to meet tons of strangers…”

“Those are the posts which work better?”

“Those I suggest might work as well?”

“You only want to post about food and cats?”

“And…?”

“And this… is a bore after a while?”

The two arrived at the new gate.  
It was a private flight, arranged by one of the three top Holdings in Japan.  
A couple of flight attendants bowed at them and showed them the way.

“See? Let me do things. And this will always be the outcome for you, Kageyama kun.”

A smile as bright as the sunshine was darted in Kageyama's direction. The taller man snorted again, then patted the smaller’s back with such eagerness anybody but him would have jumped a few steps ahead after it.  
Not that man though.  
That man was very well used at those enough to not move at all after taking them.

“If I would let you do all things your way, the best I could expect would be a daily chaos…” Kageyama put his open hand on the top of the manager’s head, almost squeezing it like it were a tangerine “… dumbass!”

The two chuckled.  
Then moved into their awaiting plane.  
A long flight which they would spend completely sleeping onto one another despite the plane being fully furnished with spacious couches and even a bed.  
Two shapes merged into one strange mix, the exact way they used to sleep in a rusty, old wagon when they were high schoolers playing volleyball in Karasuno, when they used to come back after games, practices or training camps, tired but satisfied of their young lives in a path of glory days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Flying Hero (飛雄)** is the meaning of the name of Kageyama, **Tobio**.
> 
>  **Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in Japan** is a field very well developed, mainly by the celebrate _Hiroshi Ishiguro_ (Wikipedia Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshi_Ishiguro ) whose pivotal creations let imagine that by the time this story heads too ( **2023 in this part** ) Japan will actually have regular examples of artificial intelligence robots being a creative and normal part of the society. I am very fascinated by these fields and I will happily put notations about them in my story when believably possible.


	3. Foreigner And Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Dhalia Flower Meaning** :
> 
> \- Staying graceful under pressure, especially in challenging situations  
> \- Drawing upon inner strength to succeed  
> \- Traveling and making a major life change in a positive way  
> \- Standing out from the crowd and following your own unique path  
> \- Staying kind despite being tested by certain life events  
> \- Finding a balance between adventure and relaxation  
> \- Commitment to another person or a certain ideal  
> \- Warning someone about a potential betrayal.

“Ehi… what do you think? It's super cool or is it _extremely_ super cool?”

Kageyama looked up. The ceiling of the room must have been no less than 6 meters. 

“I know you wanted something in the suburbs with a back garden… but I couldn't pass this!!! Look!!”

Hinata pointed out of the enormous window overlooking directly Milan’s Chathedral Plaza, and he presented the outlook which had him shook when the President of Power Volley Milan had offered him and his client the location for becoming his protégée new house.

“But aren't we training outside Milan? How am I supposed to move there easily from… here?”

“You haven't read a word from my prospect paper have you…”

“Well…”

“Honestly, I shouldn't even mind. You never change do you? As long as you play, nothing matters to you… I wonder what you would do without me as your manager…”

Kageyama reddened. To be scolded this way - and rightfully - by Hinata would never sit well with him, despite the fact his best friend had perfectly depicted reality there.

“You won't play at PalaDesio. The President has personally invested in a new venue in the city, complete with training area and facilities. They really want to promote a project never seen before in this Country about volley. And _you_ are the cornerstone of it all, idiot!”

“That… is my line though.”

“You wish…”

Kageyama wandered a little while in what he had been told would be his new dig. A spacious and refined apartment at the conjunction between Piazza del Duomo ad Via Carlo Maria Martini, in a two floor ancient building which had completely been restored, to pair the old elegance of its exterior with the finest technology and the most modern design in its interiors.

“Milan is famous for design since more than a century…”

Hinata was keeping talking, but Kageyama had stopped to follow him, exiting in the terrace with a solarium area which had a stunning view of the Cathedral and its Plaza, and which in such a clear day, as it was that one, it could make him see until the crown of the Alps at the horizon line, embracing protectively the town, a spiky white stream of pinnacles breaking a fine sapphire unclouded sky.

“Do you like this? It’s not a garden but…”

“It's okay.”

Hinata could know effortlessly all the words Kageyama would not mention.

“You like it a lot, don't you?”

“Mh.”

Hinata patted Kageyama's back. He didn't need more words from him to know that view had charmed him, and in his mind he thanked his kami for allowing a good weather that day, because when he had gotten himself a tour of the property it had been a showering and cold day and the view from the balcony had been a sad exhibition of multiple layers of greys.  
It wouldn't have been as easy to fascinate his friend in a day like that one, he reckoned with himself.

“You took me directly here up on the top floor… what's down?”

“That's my other surprise for you…”

And smiling like his own habit, Hinata pushed Kageyama back into the private elevator, to step down on the base floor.

“Really… ok that you have given up sport altogether Shouyo but stairs are still makeable you kno…”

Kageyama couldn't finish his sentence because as soon as the elevator reached the floor, opening its silent sliding door, his sight was met with a stunning fit room to be seen there.

“Holy…”

“Shit, right? I know!!! My jaw dropped as well when I came here last month!!!”

The space of what had previously been a luxury apartment divided in various and large rooms for daily activities had been changed into a unique area with remaining pillars scattered around, which had been the supports the architectural structure of the building had to maintain, to shift the floor into a sort of flat paradise for sport freaks.

There was _half of a volleyball court_ in there, facing a tech wall with pinpointed targets which would have given responses about the precision and the power of the balls coming crashing into it. The tech wall itself was made of collagen fibers and sensors, to imitate the structure extremely flexible and resilient of deer horns, to have at once resistance and elasticity to sustain the impact of volleyball training.

“The whole floor is completely computerized. Every training machine, every _ball_ you are going to use… they are all having chips inside to analyze anything, really… anything you will do with them. It’s a level of technology which can rival the one you have experienced in our National Team…”

“This is…”

“Great, I know! But it's not even finished… look down there!”

Kageyama looked opposite the tech wall, at the other half of the floor. Two mega screens hung from the ceiling, virtually suspended in the air.  
Below them, a comfy area with sofas and tapestries was set. On the side, a little but stylish kitchen area was dominated by a massive refrigerator, which Hinata opened proudly displaying its milk furnished shelves.

“Here you will be able to relax after training more after your normal practices… which we both know you will indulge with do don't we? And one of these two screens is actually a computer. You can visualize the holographic keyboard for it everywhere you want in this floor. It's not complicated to use, believe me I tried it…”

Kageyama took a look around.  
He glanced at the threadmill, at the weights, at the boxing area, at that big fridge, and at the only closed space present on that floor.

“That's the bathroom I suppose…”

“It’s a bathroom, a thermarium and a king-sized jacuzzi pool actually… but technically yes, you can call it bath as well I suppose…”

Hinata looked at the puzzled face of his friend.

“It's anything wrong, Bakayama?”

Kageyama shook his head.

“No… it's just that… how to say it…”

“Try?”

“It’s very… much. I mean… all this space is just for me?”

Hinata nodded.

“Of course! You are the most payed volleyball player in the world!”

Kageyama flinched.

He hated that fact.  
Truly, truly _hated it_.

“Yeah, and what for? I still a player who hasn't won a gold in The Olympics…”

Hinata smirked, then his eyes disappeared into a curved line each, his smile wide and bright, just like the one he used to wear as a kid in Karasuno at the end of a victorious game.

“ _Yet,_ my friend. It's only a matter of time.”

Kageyama clinched his tongue.  
_This guy. Never doubting me once in ten years I see… what a dumbass…_

“You make it easy as always…”

“I don't. But I trust you. And I have no doubts if there's one destined to win that gold, well it's you.”

Kageyama sat on one of the expensive and squarely shaped sofas, eyes closed and head resting, facing up.

“I will… do my best.”

Hinata sat aside him, still smiling.

“I know. It's the only thing you are capable to do. _Doing your best always, no matter what_.”

“You leave tomorrow?”

“The day after, actually. You need me around town for at least 36 hours to grab concept of the surroundings don't you?”

Kageyama wished to be able to say he would love to keep Hinata by his side for 36 months at least… but as many other times, he just grunted what was supposed to be a form of agreement regarding his best friend's words and proceeded to unpack his luggage which had previously arrived from Tokyo.

‘Oh, Tobio…”

“Mh…?”

“Alisa is still waiting for your answer about her invitation…”

Kageyama rolled his eyes.

“Guess I can tell her given your new logistic it will be impossible for you to attend it right?”

“Right…”

Hinata started to write on his electronic organizer.

“…I told Lev that his sister really is strange tho… why is she so interested in having her ex boyfriend at her marriage, I will never get it…”

Kageyama looked down. On the floor there were the karuta cards he had kept with him since his teenage days, a gift from Alisa he had belief had a positive influence on him. **NOTE A**  
Suddenly, voices of a not so remote past rushed back to him, opening streams of scenes before his eyes.  
Caresses, embraces…  
Kisses…  
Goodbyes.

“Who knows…”

“Well… _YOU_ should… but anyway, no problem. I just sent Lev your final word. Let's move on.”

Kageyama turned to Hinata.

“Why… to Lev?”

“His gift to her is the organization of the ceremony…”

“Really? But… how can he from…”

“You mean how can he be so hands on being in Brazil and all?”

“Yeah…”

“Well I pick my clients full of surprises… and he’s really good at many things I would have never predicted, beside being a top volley ace!”

“I see. Good for him. And for you, of course.”

“Are you jealous? You know you are my first and most important…”

“…client…”

“…friend.”

Kageyama jumped. He was still pretty bad at reacting to compliments. Hinata had to restrain his chuckling.

“Oh… well… you… you too. Thanx for everything Sho… most of all…”

He had approached the shorter man to grab his hand, but the other just belted him around with his arms and squeezed his torso, his bright mop of unruly hair popping out marvelously by the contrast with Kageyama's dark turtleneck jumper.

“… for having your back. And I’ll always have it, never doubt it, Bakayama.”

The squeeze of Hinata's embrace tightened and Kageyama reciprocated.

“I never could. Thanx. Thanx a lot.”

Kageyama kept looking intensely at Hinata. The familiar glare which he had always reserved, in that declination, only to him, and which was a form of in depth care, like from his scanning eyes he could witness the inner spirit of somebody.  
And Kageyama had always liked Hinata's inmost essence, so diverse from his own, but also so strangely compatible with it.

“Sometimes I wonder, Sho… are you really okay in being… I mean… on the sides of this?”

Hinata sighed. Then gleefully smiled. A sincere, luminous smile.

“Even when I haven't been very okay with it… it’s not like it could change, ain't it?”

Kageyama mumbled softly. 

“I still think you would deserve some of this more than most…”

“Awww shuck…”

“Don't make fun of me, dumbass… I truly do tho…”

“I know. But ehi, no drama… I am still the most successful shortie in the history of Japan High School volley, am I not?”

“Yeah… but… given your understanding of the game… I still don't get why you haven't become a coach, rather than a manager for players…”

Hinata jumped in front of Kageyama smirking and looking like he was enjoying that conversation a lot.

“You couldn't survive in this world in one piece if I weren't your manager…”

Kageyama grunted, as that also was very true.

“…but, there's a very valid reason to my choice, actually…”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. In my life, I spent tons of energies trying to make coaches aware of me, in the right way. They all soon or later came to me, mind changed and all, and that has always been a point of pride for me. But… thinking about what I would have loved to become after I couldn't be a player anymore, I realized I am not good at crushing people's hope… and coaches have to, constantly…”

“Yeah, like when you couldn't choose who we would have kept in our last Karasuno year…” **NOTE B**

“Exactly… I am just not good there. I never see the point in prevent somebody from thinking they can reach out…”

“Yeah… I see…”

“But I am very good at supporting people in their hopes and dreams, because I, myself first, have had many and I still nurture them… so…”

“So you can fight for us… because no one better than you cares just as much as each single player does…”

Hinata smiled at his brightest.  
Kageyama had always felt at home wherever, as long as he could turn and see that warm and super open smile.

“And that is your luck, Bakayama… imagine yourself in dealing with all I do by yourself…”

“I… I would still… make it… somehow!”

“Nope…”

Kageyama wanted to retort, but he gave up in the end. He wouldn't have lasted a week.

The two following days Hinata and Kageyama roamed around Milan, like proper tourists. Kageyama enjoyed his anonymity in Italy way more than he had anticipated. Occasionally Japanese people would guess his identity but they would rarely act on it, knowing the love the player had for privacy and the obsessive care he put in remaining far removed from social interactions unless absolutely requested.  
The era of social media drugging was anyway pretty much a thing of the past since the start of the 20s, so the attitude Kageyama had always had about mediating himself was more and more appreciated by his Countrymen.

How would European react to it, though, it was a novelty to be discovered which didn't anyway interest him in the slightest, despite the bet on him his new President had placed for making Power Volley Milan the best team in the history of European ones.

“So… for everything you may need…”

Hinata was fumbling in his light man bag, which was keeping sporting the same old pins he used to had hanging from his sport bag back in Karasuno and from his backpack at University:

“… this is my gift before I leave…”

Standing at his gate at Milan City Airport, Hinata took off a pair of rubber wrist watches, landing the black one to Kageyama, startled by the fact.

“I… don't wear… these?”

Hinata chuckled, still handing the small device to the tallest man.

“It’s not a watch. It’s a wrist pad. The latest version. It’s a pad, a phone, a home automation device, and, that’s the coolest thing, it's an holographic projector of the finest quality. You wear it… like I am doing… now… and…”

Hinata was trying to set the two pieces at once. Kageyama was looking at him like he were an aborigen dancer trying to do ballet.  
After a little trying, both devices looked like they had connected to their functions.

“Take yours… wear it please!”

Kageyama, fully unconvinced, did as requested anyway.

“Not that loose… it has to fit your wrist!”

Hinata adjusted Kageyama's band. When he finished to do it, he set his own band, and suddenly, in front of him, another Hinata appeared: same as he looked, adjusting his own wrist band.

“Oh… wow…”

“Isn't this the most incredible thing? It’s me!”

Kageyama tried not to laugh, and snorted a bit.

“Trust me… just one of yourself is enough…”

“But this is cooler… because instead of getting to simply chat or have video calls… now we can almost be together even if we are a world apart while we decide to talk!”

Kageyama's eyes widened, then immediately shrunk back.  
That gift, that technology, was indeed ultra cool. But an hologram of Hinata… It would never be like being with Hinata. Not that he couldn't confess him that. He looked so happy about those bands, he had to give him satisfaction. And after all, they were indeed pretty cool.

“Thank you. I appreciate all these… stuffs... A lot.”

Hinata set Kageyama's wrist pad, and a replica of the man appeared before him as well. The two holograms were merging and lots of pixels were colliding, buzzing a little. A little crowd was paying attention at the two of them. And also at the two guys projecting their own holograms around the airport.

“I have to go… I will explain to you how to use yours when I land back in Japan…”

The two guys looked at one another.  
It wasn't the first time their paths had diverged. They had spent three years apart while in College. But that had felt different.

“Take care, Tobio…”

“You too, Sho.”

“I’ll call as soon as I land…” 

“Do it…”

Hinata snapped; making counts with his fingers, like kids, he realized he couldn't have called then avoiding to wake up his friend in the middle of the night.  
Kageyama said he shouldn't mind, because he would have been up anyway.

“Athletes have to sleep regularly…”

“Tell me something new… but I know myself… it takes time to me to get used to new places…”

Hinata looked at Kageyama. He wondered why he had insisted so much for playing abroad. Japanese League would have covered him in gold if he had decided to stay, more than they had with Ushijima and even Sakusa; but Kageyama had insisted until Shouyo had accepted his idea, despite not fully believing it like he had sold it, which apparently had to be that he wanted to experiment with different players and different countries and perfect through that his volleyball until its ultimate stage.

“Okay then. But… really… don't be the usual stubborn bonehead… if you need something… anything… just tell me. Flights don't mean much to me. I like to fly…”

Kageyama smiled thinly.

“You always did like it…”

And saying that, Kageyama approached the shorter man, engulfing him in a tight and affectionate embrace.

“Don't worry for me. I’ll be fine. I _am_ fine. This is my dream life. This is all a blessing. And I have to thank you, because you have helped me through in making it all true.”

Hinata squeezed Kageyama's waist, still into his towering embrace.

“Nobody deserves this more than you, man…”

Hinata nuzzled into Kageyama's chest. The dream of one, had always been the dream of the other, too, and even though the shorter man had been forced by reality to twist his own and place it into another point of view, that dream they had long shared was still as urgent and worthy fighting for:

“… so don't dare let me and everyone else down, ok?”

Kageyama let go of Hinata, and looking into his eyes, he raised a fist in Hinata's direction, with the other mirroring him, and touching knuckles theatrically at that closing moment he said:

“That goes without saying, you dumbass.”

“Good. You better keep your promise then, or I will chase you all around the world and I will smash your head.”

What made Kageyama laugh, was the fact he would totally do it, in case.

Back from the airport in a taxi with no driver Kageyama stepped into his new house.  
Silence had long been his companion but there was a foreign quality to his old friend in that Nation, in that Town he had barely seen the start of, and in that enormous location where he didn't feel anything was truly his, which was making even silence a different thing.  
But it was the new start he had decided he needed.  
He had simply to wait and adjust.  
No big deal.  
It had not been the first time he had started something alone.  
And in that big town, he was far from being the only foreigner who had to start it all from scratch.

He exited on the terrace, looking at the Duomo.  
It was a beautiful construction, stern but elegant, dominating the space surrounding it, casting a powerful shadow around.  
Such a beautiful, imposing piece.  
People would say it looked just like he did, majestic but cold, reachable but actually distant.

At a certain point, his phone rang.  
His coach.  
Time to use some English again…

“Kageyama San? This is Ferrer.”

“Good afternoon, Mister Ferrer Sama. Is there anything I can do for you?” Said the player, moving back into the room.

“I just called to check if everything was fine… If there's anything you need, tell us immediately…”

“Thank you for your concern… and… everything is perfect. I just left my manager at the airport, we have set up everything these past two days, so I look forward to meet the team the day after tomorrow.”

“Very well. Very, very well then…”

“Can I ask you some insights about your training approach, so that I can come prepared when we meet?”

“Oh, sure… I knew you were of the ultra zealous species, but I would not imagine you would start your training before you actually meet the team…”

“Well, this beautiful house is very equipped, so… I could start testing myself a bit. It would help me get accustomed to this all…”

“Understandably. Great then, let's see what you could do in these two days…”

The conversation between the two lasted half an hour. Kageyama mostly listened, but all he heard from his coach pleased him.  
He felt like the two days which had to pass before he would start to train with his new team were an useless eternity, which would only be partially eased up by the tips for training he had just received from his new coach.  
He seemed a visionary, and Kageyama had always loved those kind of coaches.  
He couldn't wait to learn again.  
There were no limits to what he wanted to learn in volley, and looking at the lamps lightening up the Duomo as evening was starting to fall, he felt that he would enjoy his new life experience in Italy, at the end, completely and without regrets.

“Let's test my new volley sets…”

For two hours, Kageyama enjoyed his personal volley court, registering all his performance parameters anew- because Hinata tended to give him too easy goals, and he had permitted him to set all his fit devices just to understand how to change himself their inputs later- and after a good shower post training, he had to decide what to eat.  
He didn't want to cook anything.  
He wasn't particularly good at cooking, even though he wasn't either that bad.

“Let's find some catering service…”

And sitting on the square sofas he had already learnt to love, he made a keyboard appear in front of him, setting the right screen hanging in front of him as a computer.

“Mmh… let's search for Japanese catering…”

But he erroneously typed into the engine Japanese _carting_ which the computer changed itself into _charting_.  
Before he could do anything about it, on the giant screen it appeared the Official Japanese Sport Chart, which had to be one of Hinata's most recent and most searched for queues, giving how the processor had shifted to that so naturally.

“What… the hell… is this?!”

Kageyama grunted and reddened all by himself, annoyed by his own face placed (stable, from the arrow beside it) at the third spot there.

“Oh, please… this is… so stupid…”

If he only could stop messing around and get back to the search engine to find food…

“Stupid virtual keyboard you bastard.. switch back…”

But instead than switching, he pressed the roaming player feature of the Oricon Charts. And, with trifling jingles to support it, a giant series of cards encompassing Japanese Top Athletes began to appear on the screen.

Kageyama screamed.

On the television hung up, beside himself and other sports’ athletes, he saw Sakusa, Ushijima, Motoya, Goshiki, Haiba Lev… and Miya Atsumu.

“Ok. I really didn't need this now…”

Suddenly he felt not hungry anymore.  
He switched everything off, and laid closed eyes on the sofa.

Maybe he could have called him.  
Atsumu would have liked it, probably.  
But…  
To say what, in the end?  
There was not much he could add to what they had said to one another before Miya had moved to Germany to play there.  
Words had never been his forte anyway. Consoling had never been a strong point of his either.  
He had tried to do no harm, but in the end, as usual, truth was he was one to follow his own instinct first.  
His own will, only.  
His own path, untouched and unbothered by other people's say on the matter.

A long sigh went exhaled to fill the darkened floor. Since Kageyama was motionless, the light sensors had not registered they had to light up where he was.  
Then he moved an arm, and soft lights caressed his figure sat down.  
He stood up, ready to go upstairs, when his wrist pad lighted up.

“Incoming call from Sho… How?…”

Kageyama did what Hinata had showed him, and a normal call started with no hologram projected from the wristband. Kageyama put the wristband nearer to his mouth.

“Sho… how can you call now?”

“Ah, don't say… we had to land in Moscow for a meteor shower making computers go crazy…”

“Shit, that's bad…”

“Yep… but whatever, it happens. But it's not why I am calling tho…”

“Ok?”

“I am sending you stuff which I implore you to read…”

“Oi, oi… is not like you to implore, dumbass…”

A disturbed buzz cut a bit of the answer coming back from Hinata.

“Can you say it again? I couldn't hear a word…”

“Eh, sorry man, but here's a mess, everyone is calling out to somebody and line is just bad. Anyway… I sent you two emails, and both are to be read absolutely.”

“Okay. I will read them…”

“Don't be condescending ok? The first is from a Japanese magazine which wants to interview you…”

“Fine? I don't see why you are so worked up by that… I generally give out interviews nicely…”

“Well, sometimes you do… but in there I put excerpts of the latest interview these guys had the other day with Sakusa…”

“I still don't get the point… why shall this have to do with me?”

“It has. Apparently Sakusa told them he would like to transfer where you are so that he could keep playing with you…”

In the darkness, Kageyama flinched.

“Are you sure he has said exactly that? Journalists like to twist our words a lot to create drama and get more clicks on their websites…”

“You may be right smartass which is why in that mail I included the recording of Sakusa's answer. I don't think it can be twisted. He really did say that.”

Kageyama stayed silent for a moment, at which Hinata tested if they were still connected with their call.

“Sorry, I was just thinking… and I believe that Wakatoshi will never allow that… he likes to play with Sakusa and that is reciprocal… plus I don't see Kyoomi ever wanting to displease him that much…it’s really common knowledge how he likes to play with Ushijima, and although he likes to play with me the most, it’s not his style to affect National Team balances if he can avoid it.”

“What does National Team has to do with it…”

“If you create tension at club team levels, the strain of that will follow you in the National ranks…”

“Well, but I could try to convince Ushijima at leaving as well, could I not? Granted I am not his manager, but I have a great relationship with his, so…”

“Don't really think Wakatoshi will ever contemplate leaving Japan…”

“Who knows? Why not?”

_Because Tooru’s there… He won't ever fly away from him willingly…_

“Ushijima Wakatoshi is a very traditional man. In this, he's just like Kyoomi. They really would always only stay in Japan if it were in their sole hands to choose.”

“But then Sakusa Sama wants to reach you…”

_Long story, Sho…_

“As I said, I don't think it's gonna happen… anyway, what about the second news you had?”

“Oh, yeah… I’ve booked you an Italian Show appearance… your President insisted you must go. Worry not, he will be with you…”

“But…”

“I know I know… you hate these things but it's important for your team and the publicity it can get. Your President asked me that as a personal favor so I really couldn't say no. And it’s a show which has a Japan theme to it in that episode so you won't be alone. They have invited other prominent Countrymen beside you…”

“Like… who?”

“No idea. But it's one of the main broadcasts in Italy so they're gonna be big names for sure. I put patches of info about the show in the second mail, take a look there tomorrow… and… Are you ok? You’ve suddenly gone completely soundless… are you still breathing?”

“Does it matter when I say that although I still breathe I am not ok with any of this?”

“It doesn't, sorry. But I promise you'll have fun. Or at least… a bit of it.”

It was clear by his tone how Hinata knew Kageyama would have loathed any single second of that task. But he had come to Italy to make volley surge like never before in a Country which had a flattering and historical tradition with the sport, and while doing it, he was also an Ambassador for Japan. There was no space for him to hide from certain social responsibilities, so he had to learn how to roll with it.

“I would kill you if you were here…”

“Which is why I am glad I am not. Gotta go now, flight is being resuming…catch you when I land home, this time for real. Go to sleep, and don't mess with the tech devices ok?”

_I already had…_

“Sure. Catch you when you land then, have a safe trip, and try to sleep a bit yourself…”

And then Kageyama switched his wristband call, thinking how if Hinata was by his side, he would not kill him.  
In the silence of his new space he couldn't rest.  
Eyes shut, thoughts running dangerously and he wanted to switch off, but he couldn't.  
Tossing in his bed, he tried to put his mind on pleasantly suggestive pieces of future.  
He had learnt the identities of his incoming teammates, some of which he had already faced multiple times in the Volleyball Nation League, in the World Cup and at the Olympics.  
He felt warmer imagining himself on a court again.  
He took his oldest volleyball from the floor, one of the possessions of his he would bring anywhere along himself and like a kid, embracing it, he finally fell in Morpheus’ arms.

It took a few days for Kageyama to get used to the Italian Style of volley things.  
Everybody was very cheerful and nice, but one thing which had immediately stood clear for him was that Italians do everything louder than others.  
He couldn't stop thinking how Italy would the perfect place for Hinata, as most people were over friendly, enthusiastic, talkative, energetic and … _just very loud_.

“I have heard that tonight you are a guest at Supershow… that's wonderful!”

Trying to muster a bit of the Italian he was trying to learn with a dedicated tutor, and helping himself with the latest translator app, Kageyama replied to his new captain, a giant of two meters and fifteen, that he was honored for the opportunity, but that in his opinion all the team shall have gotten the opportunity to attend.

“No, no… those things are boring and you can't sit a team with 16 players in a studio where other guests are expected as well…plus… you are the star! We are all very happy you’ve agreed in coming here. You make us invincible!”

Kageyama couldn't escape the red covering his face.

“Awww! Guys look! He's a tender heart, he blushed!”

For some reason, Italians had to consider embarrassment a form of esthetic. Kageyama thought it would take a while for him to understand such inclinations.

“Kageyama, hurry…you have to be ready in time and the President will take you for heading to the tv studios in two hours…”

Kageyama looked at his coach like he hadn't understood him.

“But… take a shower and dress… will request me maybe twenty minutes at best?”

Mr. Ferrer looked at him like a patient dad.

“I have gotten word you are pretty naive sometimes, and please don't take my words in the wrong way… it's refreshing to see somebody as successful as you really doesn't put himself on a pedestal…”

Kageyama at that point was _sure_ he was not getting his coach at all.

“Mmh… yes?”

“Kageyama, you will be styled for tonight. The President has given instruction to take you at the Armani Boutique in Monte Napoleone and let you get prepped up for the show.”

The young man remained wordless in front of the coach, who sighed and asked the captain to pull him in the shower before time would run away too much.

“You are a blast, Kageyama… people have no idea how funny you are, really…”

“I… am not trying… to be funny?”

His captain smiled genuinely at him.

“And we like it so. You feel like one of us. We appreciate this even more, considering your level as a player. So, tonight… think how we are all with you in that show, and even if we know you only since three days… we support you!”

Kageyama lowered his head, the typical manner Japanese people assume when feeling grateful and wanting to express that gratefulness ceremoniously but convinced it has a deeper meaning presented that way, and bowing gently, he quietly said:

“I’ll do my best to not disappoint, thank you!”

Recharged by the heartfelt words of his captain, Kageyama bared to be dressed and styled by the personnel at the Armani Boutique, and his eyes marveled at the beauty of the interiors Palazzo Taverna offered him to see, while a plethora of professionals took care of his hair, nails (which were perfect anyway) and skin, to make him glow for the important night ahead.

When the President of Power Volley came into the boutique, accompanied by its owner, his eyes widened at the sight of his newly recruited favourite.

“Good evening, Mr. President.”

“Good evening, my dear kid. You look extremely handsome, in that dark blue suit. It seems made only for you to wear it, do you think as well, dear Andrea?”

The bearded man beside the President smiled, taking a good look at Kageyama, who stood impeccably fit in a three piece, hair slightly parted on the side, shiny and silky, his dark blue eyes matching the color of the suit in a dreamy way.

“I might ask him to join our models at our next Men Fashion Week, if you allow it…”

“Hopefully we'll be in the final stage of the Cup, Andrea, so I hope he won't be able to think about your offer at all…”

And the two men reached out to Kageyama, who was catching only partially their Italian spoken speech.

“This is my dear friend Andrea Camerana, Giorgio Armani’s nephew, Kageyama. He has been so kind in insisting for dressing you tonight, despite not knowing you personally yet.”

Kageyama understood that was a form of honor he had been object of, so he thanked both men in front of him, in his usual elegant way which was always so pleasing to the eyes.  
While spending a bit of time with the Boutique owner, aside his President, Kageyama couldn't help but feel like nothing in that place belonged to volleyball.  
Everything was beautiful, and refined, and artistic… but in his book it was just a bunch of hours he had to waste to please people who were not even liking his sport in the first place, probably.  
Then he remembered his captain’s words.  
He had to do certain things for his team's sake.  
Even if those things were not strictly volley related… in the end, they actually were.  
He complied dutifully at any request of his President, and exchanged contacts with Mr. Camerana, who seemed entranced by his look, to the point his piercing gaze could be uncomfortable even, and then finally Kageyama sat in the President car which would have taken them to the Rai studios where Supershow was put on air.

The show assistant came at them straight, giving instructions about where they would sit, when they would be shown, how they would be framed, and every other tiny detail useful at letting them aware that for a couple of hours they would be nothing less than attractive and mute fishes in a fancy aquarium.

“Kid, I am sorry if I am forcing you to do this,” said the President while the staff was checking lights on them before the host would introduce one of the other Japanese stars listed to be a guest that Saturday night, and which was scheduled right before them “I know you are not one for these shows, but trust me, it is necessary…”

Kageyama felt impressed. The President seemed to care, and since he hadn't necessarily to, given that he was his boss after all, the fact he was checking on Kageyama's feeling and wanted to explain the reason behind his choice was admirable.

“Mr. President, you don't need to explain to me why I must be here. You think I have to. So I accept it's for the better. I will try to honor you, the team and my home Country with every fiber of my being, and make actions and say words which will be considered proper.”

The President smiled.

“I want us to make volley in this Country the most loved of sports. It’s the most practiced. You and I will work it up from there, and today is a step in that direction. Please… help me in realizing my dream.”

Kageyama understood.  
His President was a visionary volleyball freak too.  
That tv studio wasn't apart from his court anymore. That tv studio had to be conquered as well.

“I will do anything I can. It's a promise. Thank you for believing in me this much, President Sama.”

Kageyama would have liked to say a word more but the siren of the incoming guest about to take the stage silenced anybody beside the host in the studio.  
Lights dimmed out till they went off, and the only illuminated portion was a circular zone by the right side of the stage, just opposite at the one where Kageyama and his President were sitting.

“Dear viewers, I am pretty proud to introduce for the very first time on Italian Television a young new artist which has known an increasing amount of success in these past months. It is a young musician of brilliant talent, a songwriter who sings his songs accompanied only by his guitar, or his piano. Many young people follow him on his social platforms, also here in Italy, but so far in not Eastern Countries we had never the pleasure of hosting him live. But now that his first album in English is about to come out, we have gotten the chance to present him acoustically, flesh and bones to you. It’s with incredible joy that I can introduce you this song, which will be, I am sure a great success, and which is called **“Peel Off Me”** …”

The lights outbursted in a flashy cone to reveal a tall silhouette holding a guitar in that part of the stage where the performer was about to start strumming:

“… so please, everybody, give your best applause to Kei Tsukishima!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Power Volley Milano** it is a new volley team based in Milan. It has started its activities only in 2010, and currently is in A1 Volley Series in Italy. I picked it because it is functional to my story to have a young and visionary new team as the one Kageyama gets recruited for in Italy. Please note how my fanfiction at this stage is fast forwarding in the future, therefore all the staff and players at Power volley Milan are FICTIONAL here.
> 
> **Pala Desio** it is a famous sport venue in the northern part of Italy where many teams, included Power Volley, are actually playing at right now. Desio is a town in the upper side of Milan, and which is around 24 km away from it.
> 
> **My locations are always a real homage to places which I love**. So also the terrace Kageyama sports the Cathedral from in his new apartment is real (but fast forwarded and restructured internally). To have an idea, look here https://it.luxuryestate.com/p49589145-attico-in-vendita-milano
> 
> **New Tech Materials and Elasticity/Resistence** As usual I try to put in my fanfiction elements of a believable developed universe. All the technical notations in this chapter are believable developments of technologies and bio-technologies which are already existent. The deer horns are already creating fiber collagen materials with incredibly pleasant properties. Please read if you like to inform yourself more: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-12/qmuo-rai121916.php
> 
> **Holographic Keyboards and Holographic Projections** The technology for these is already pretty dated, but in my fiction I have predicted developments which are CURRENTLY at testing, so that it can sound natural past 2020 to have them as everyday technology. Please again, read some if you like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projection_keyboard
> 
> **NOTE A** Citation from my fiction Okurimono
> 
> **Best Countries to Play at for male Volleyball Players** Italy has always been a dreamland for professional volley players, as it has constantly given in decades some of the highest pay ranks for the top athletes. Italy, Russia, Turkey, Germany, France and Brazil are the countries where volley pro player can have the best paychecks.
> 
> **NOTE B** Citation from my fiction Shingetsu No Kaihatsu
> 
> **Sociological Evolution of Social Media Impact Pattern** The prediction I am making in this chapter about a likely decrease of the social media craze of famous people is in line with the latest Sociological Studies on the matter. The rapid involution of the media exchanges and the will of the Governments to start to put a control at the level of rage, pettiness, nasty behaviors online will very likely change the approach famous people (and later normal people) will have regarding social media interactivity. If you like to read more on the matter, try for instance "Electronic Partecipation and Evolution Of Social Media Patterns" Springer Edition.
> 
> **Self driven cars** already exist in some Countries.
> 
> **VolleyBall Nation League** as every volley lover must know, this is the year (2018) where the new system of international volley competition will be implemented. In my fictions, we mirror a SEQUEL to this start, as both Ikigai and Itamidome are set well after 2018, and Shingetsu No Kaihatsu touches exactly 2018. To read more about this, refer at least to THIS  > https://www.fivb.org/viewPressRelease.asp?No=73085&Language=en#.WmYKZJOdX_A
> 
> **Andrea Camerana** is in real life the son of Giorgio Armani's sister. Assuming this fiction Itamidome is set in a time when maybe (let's hope not!) the great stylist may be no more, I assumed his nephew to have a pivotal role in the company after his departure. Forgive me King Giorgio!!! ;)


	4. Ghosts From The Past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Language flower meaning - Carnation**
> 
> • Love  
>  • Fascination  
>  • Distinction
> 
> The carnation’s scientific name, Dianthus, comes from a combination of two Latin words: “dios,” meaning gods, and “anthos,” meaning flower. **Carnations are referred to as the flowers of the gods.**
> 
> In Japan red carnation symbolizes love and it’s the go to flower for mother’s day
> 
> While all carnations symbolize love and affection, the color of the flower also carries meaning. 
> 
> • Red: Deep Love and Admiration  
>  • White: Pure Love and Good Luck  
>  • Pink: A Mother’s Love  
>  • Yellow: Disappointment or Rejection  
>  • Purple: Capriciousness  
>  • Striped: Rejection or Regret

As soon as he could do it without appearing impolite to any of the show staffers or to his President, Kageyama flew to the dressing rooms behind the backstage area right after his own interview had been done, too swiftly to be stopped but not quickly enough to avoid being noticed.

He didn't care about people guesses.

That was one of those moments in life when even someone as oblivious to connections as he was had to be assured he had to act on his own emotional impulse, as faithfully as possible.  
Instincts were his forte after all.  
Even though he was not good at placing them in a greater scheme of things, he wasn't ever afraid of trailing after them, once he could properly acknowledge them.  
The sound of his very expensive leather shoes was echoing in the temporary corridor. The sounds seemed all more intense, all more lasting than one would expect them to be, as the one walking wanted actually to run.  
That echo reverberating in his head was oddly calming though, as he was approaching the bottom of the passageway like he could place a light at the ending tunnel of it.  
People had probably started to ask where he had headed; those who had seen where he had, would certainly by then question his motives.

He didn't care.

Tsukishima had to be in one of those rooms, and he was just trying to greet one of his breed.  
Tsukishima had to be in one of those…  
Probably the smallest and the less noticeable one, if he had words to say about it.  
And so Kageyama knocked onto the nameless and furthest dressing room which was at the bottom of the small lane, waiting for a reaction from the inside.  
After a few seconds, he heard steps moving in his direction, until he saw a space opening in front of him, a voice from behind the door inviting him in.

A long lost voice in his days.

A voice still holding its power on him.

“Welcome in my humble abode, King…”

Kageyama turned head at the nickname he hadn't heard since a longtime before, still taking his steps into the opened room; and behind him, standing near the door he had already shut back, his favorite smug grin was coloring the pale face of Kei.

He hadn't changed at all in those years, and watching his face, Kageyama felt suddenly home, moving his facial muscles accordingly to the warmth which had just invaded his being.

“Is that a smile on your face? Has age mellowed our impassive sovereign?” Said the tall blonde man, inclining a little his head, in that typical way of his which was so peculiar, and which hadn't changed at all either in years.  
Kageyama tried to frown at his hinting; but it was hard to remove that faint smile from his face and he failed at switching apparent moods fully.  
From Tsukishima's way to talk, one couldn't guess the two hadn't spoken in person in terms of dozens of months. They had through phone calls, or through rare chats and messages, but it had been a long gap since they had been able to look at one another in the eyes in the same room.

“Like this is the first time you've seen me smile at you…”

Tsukishima came to face Kageyama directly, closing the space between them, and placing just a couple of inches from his former classmate. **NOTE A**

“I take pride in the fact I have been for a while the only one who knew you could smile like that…”

The vicinity didn't feel strange nor oppressive to neither man, and they kept looking at each other's face like they could guess what they had been up to from it, without asking.  
Questions seemed useless.  
Questions seemed little by then.

“There are… things of me… which are still only a knowledge of yours.”

At that spoken whisper, Tsukishima lowered his eyes, diverting them from Kageyama's face, and moving to sit in front of a mirrored desk, he sighed, scratching his head.  
Kageyama didn't move from his standing place, he just turned slightly to look at the mirror as well.

They started to speak again like they were both talking to the mirror, and their vicinity began to feel less meaningful, albeit only on the surface.  
Their eyes couldn't focus properly on each other's face anymore, not even in reflection, so they were both speaking at the other while looking at their own images, somewhere in between their necks and the top of their heads, alternatively.  
Very strangely for two people who were able to be completely blunt when speaking, it was like the words they really wanted to say couldn't come as easily as they had expected them to.  
To watch their reflections in the mirror instead of their own eyes directly, their own faces directly, their own bodies directly had to be a tentative patch they both felt they were in need of at the start of their re-meet.  
But such an aide wouldn't stop their truest words to come out in the end:

“I knew you would be here today, King…”

Tsukishima's voice was deep, each word out of his mouth sounding like he had thought of it from the core of his being. The sound of his voice, although different from his teenage times, had a texture Kageyama had always loved. He had learnt how he loved it after the two had settled their differences once they had become classmates. Not that Kageyama had ever confessed to Tsukishima that appreciation. It was one of his secrets he would never share unless questioned directly about it, and up until then, Kei had never guessed and never asked if he did love his voice.

“You… did?”

“Of course. I approve and check about anything I am involved with…”

“Oh.”

For a moment, Tsukishima's eyes moved to look at Kageyama's face in the mirror. He saw the frown coming at the realization of his managing skills, which Kageyama knew he lacked himself, and he couldn't stop a little grin surfacing back onto his lips, at the catch of his former setter’s frustration over a comparison he had just done in his own mind and which was as clear as a written paper for the always observing Kei.

“While it seems that you… don't?”

Kageyama's frustrated frown increased at the allusion. It felt like when they were young boys, when Tsukishima could effortlessly make him feel a clueless inept with the littlest speech.  
A little red began to color Tobio's cheeks.  
Tsukishima's eyes had to wander out of Kageyama's face to avoid to get blushing himself.

“Hinata… does it for me…”

With a fondly murmur, Kei fully smiled:

“You never change… so much better than everyone else in something, so totally lost to the point of being considered retarded in things people of all types manage in their every day…”

Kageyama would have retorted to anybody else those apparently rude words, but seeing Kei smile was making him unable to function.  
And what he was saying was true anyway.

“You haven't changed either. Always ready to sit somewhere spouting wise on others…”

Kei turned his chair, to face Kageyama instead than Kageyama's mirror reflection, and putting his chin on his crossed hands, elbows put on his own knees, still smiling a little, he asked for the King to admit it was too easy to find him at faults to avoid mockery.

At that, Kageyama relaxed.  
Indeed it was.  
Picking another chair, Kageyama also sat down, hands lazy jointed and forearms on his spread thighs, his face looking at Kei's from down upwards.

“Why did you agree in coming if you knew?”

Tsukishima chuckled.  
His typical chuckle full of judgement and sarcasm.  
Kageyama had missed it so much and he realized he had only when hearing it live after so vaste a time.

“Well, of course I did because it is good for my career? And I… well… it’s not like I don't want to see you…”

Kageyama's hands clasped less lazily.

“But you… you never…”

It had been ages Kageyama had stopped stuttering his words out. Given how his face looked as young as ever, Tsukishima's eyes glowed, the screen shelter his glasses used to provide to conceal such lively notes from his eyes long gone after his college years, and for a moment he tried to counter his weakness, fearing the other would read into it a space to move within and which he wasn't ready to even name again.  
But Kageyama was too flustered to notice, and Kei felt strangely safer catching on that miss, replying with a voice which was way more unalloyed than his feelings:

“Looked out for you? You know… you were always surrounded by so many _friends_ …”

“I wasn't.”

Kageyama's reply had been instantaneous and stout. The customary voice and the stock attitude of his couldn't fool Tsukishima's experience of him though, as he surmised correctly his harshness was just another side of his exigency to come out as unambiguous as possible. And the reason Kageyama didn't want his words to be mistaken was that he wanted the persons he cared for to be able to simply get him for who he was.  
Kageyama's explicit straightforwardness was the most direct and easy way he had to show who he was but only to the very few people he considered worthy to have that revealed to them.  
To those people, he would always open his heart in an excruciatingly complete way.  
Excruciating for those people, and probably never really for him, who was always as cold as ice even when bursting in passionate flames.  
Kei was still finding both fascinating and cruel the way Kageyama's mind (heart?) worked.

“You were. And that's beside the point anyway. Our set up couldn't change. You have your life, and I have mine.”

There was no blame nor grudge in Tsukishima's voice. Kageyama's hands relaxed newly. That was true. Their paths had to diverge and it wasn't anyone's fault.

“You could have called to meet. Still.”

“And what for? To become a part of your harem? No… no thank you. It ain't for me…”

Kageyama's senses were probably trying to find a crack in Kei's voice which didn't materialize. So he tried his best to not let his voice crack, neither:

“You make me look like I am a slut…”

The voice didn't crack, but Kageyama turned his face down casting at the side of the room. His hair compassionately shadowing his eyes to make it impossible for someone taller to catch his lids.

_You are…_

_Well… I guess I am…_

“Are you not?”

Kageyama's face rose from below, like it had been smacked and shaken. His eyes were wide open in disbelief but no sound was coming off of him.

_Great job, Kei… cretin! Look at his face… you're hurting him… when it's the last thing you want to do…_

“ No… sorry. Don't take this seriously please. I know you are not a slut. You have never promised anything. You didn't promise me, and I am fairly sure you haven't either to anybody else.”

_Please, tell me you didn't… would I be able to stand it if you did? And how many “anybody else” are in your life by now, King?_

Kageyama's eyes wandered to Kei's face. He had calmed down immediately after Kei's rephrase, and could sustain to watch the tallest man newly, without fears. His eyes color seemed warmer, the amber tones in his pupils apparently popping more than Kageyama could remember. Maybe because of his contacts. Maybe because the heart grows fonder of what got lost in the past pages of a life’s book.  
They looked way richer than the setter remembered them.  
And he had remembered them many and many times over already.

“You are right. Promises are not for me. Not those kind of affectionate promises at least…”

_Thank God…_

“You are devoted only to your demon, your volley…”

They were looking at one another's semblance and it was like a calm tide was generously gifting them both with liquid relax and embracing light, although they were stuck in a little cubicle with no window and it was past eleven pm in Italy.  
Kageyama realized for the millionth time how Tsukishima had the incredible capacity to make him at ease.   
Tsukishima was the one who could better slow his world down.  
He had always found that ironic, since their starts had been so tumultuous and always bringing him on the verge of committing murder instead. **NOTE 1**

“You’re right. Again. Like you always are, after all.”

Kageyama's voice became imperceptibly tender-hearted, a tone which wasn't at all foreign to him, so Kei stiffened, panicking mildly as he did and realized it while doing it. But once more Kageyama didn't catch on it. He was intently scooping all over Kei’s face and from the neck down it looked like his eyes couldn't focus.  
The captivating force emanating from Kageyama's dark blue orbs was still able to make the whole of Kei's stomach flip.  
No matter how many years would pass, he confessed to himself that could never vary.

“You don't swap habits King, do you? Still like to flatter me by praising my brain, I see…”

Kageyama had imperceptibly closed into Tsukishima's personal space and the older one had frozen a bit more visibly. Their chairs were now pretty united.

“I say what I see, and I think out of what I know. But… it has never been only your brain which had gotten me…”

Tsukishima pushed his chair back with a popping reaction from his legs, standing up and trembling, wide eyes looking at Kageyama with a mixture of alarm and trepidation. Looking at him, Kageyama acknowledged if he was able to find rest, solace and tranquillity in Tsukishima's presence, the other probably couldn't as much. Raising up standing as well, wearing his most marvelous, considerate smile, he offered Kei what he thought he wanted most.

Peace.

Landing his right out, still graciously smiling at a disoriented Kei, Kageyama asked the other to let him know in the future where he would be, so that in case their places would be the same one occasionally they could hang out, without any other implication than telling one another's about some of themselves again.

“You… have always been able to make my world slow down, Kei. Even today, even after so much time since we sat in the same room, you have this… way to be which makes me feel… like I am a koi fish in a beautiful pond. I feel safe. And everything gets slower, and softer. So… if you don't mind and if…”

Tsukishima could read Kageyama's thoughts in the way his voice would speed up or disappear in a whisper; he could name his needs in the words he was saying, and guess the words he wasn't saying in the shades of his cheeks and ears as much as in the glimpses of light in his eyes. Tsukishima had learnt all of that in years of young love pining, as his extremely perceptive brain was overpowered by his even more perceptive heart, once he had learnt how not to fear it anymore.

“You… you are not bothering me with this request, King… on the contrary I… I am very glad you want to keep up with me better from now on…”

The way Kageyama's eyes lighted up at those words sent Kei's heart to a bounce.  
Hopefully Kageyama hadn't caught on that. Hopefully his bonehead wouldn't think any of it.

“I definitely want. And… you know… I still wonder if you are doing those mixes… up to these days…”

Tsukishima chuckled.  
The always practical King Kageyama and his way to use anything and anybody in favor of his demonic obsession like it was natural.  
People can ask, can they not?   
If one never asks, one might never know if he could get something.

“Does the King miss my training mixes, by chance?” **NOTE B**

Kageyama frowned. Tsukishima thought he hadn't aged a day from the high school kid he had hated so furiously before realizing he was madly in love with him instead. That beautiful face, those noble and elegant features which couldn't be ruined not even by the most etched grumpiness… would his heart ever stop skipping beats while looking at that face?

“What if I do?”

Tsukishima bursted in a laugh, one of those complete laughs of his where he would hold his stomach and screech **NOTE 2** like a little hyena. Kageyama started to tag along in a more modest manner, until it was natural for the two of them to embrace and pat each other's back till their laughing had slowed down.  
They detached looking at one another.  
They had been kind of friends after having being kind of enemies and before becoming kind of lovers.  
Maybe they could start back from the middle, and being just there for one another when in need of someone they could be really themselves with?  
Even living at the opposite sides of the world, that could have been manageable.

“I will send you monthly mixes for your routines then. How long do they last these days? Two ho…”

“Three hours and a half!”

Tsukishima couldn't believe he had heard it fairly.

“Three hours and a half? Daily? Beside practice? Do you… even sleep at all, you volleyball freak?”

To be called a volleyball freak by Tsukishima felt right by Kageyama. He was that.  
He was undoubtedly that.  
A volleyball freak.  
There was no judgement. There was no belittling in his former teammate’s words.  
It was just a stated fact.

“I do sleep enough. Thank you for your concern, you… damn! I can't tease you as a four eyes anymore!”

Tsukishima wore his best looking-down-on-someone face, and agreed the setter couldn't do it anymore.  
As competitive but little wordy as Kageyama was, it was clear it would take him a while to come up with another mocking formula to replace four eyes, so for that day, Tsukishima knew he had prevailed.  
His heart went to a place he had thought he had shut down way before. But as warm as that place was, he tried to not think consciously about it.

“See? King still the best nickname. I knew it would never go out if fashion with you… anyway. Three hours and half then? Fine. Gimme your mailing contacts, and also your home address here in Italy. You're getting a mix new each month, and sometimes who knows, even a physical trace of them…”

“A new mix by a super popular pop star? Each month? Wow… thank you, Kei…”

_Kei…still sounds so good when it's you saying it…_

“Wanna listen to my album, too?”

Kageyama nodded.

“Good. I’m sending you a bundle in the incoming days then, so don’t throw the package when the postal delivery will come at your door. After all, to have the Flying Hero of Japan as a fan, it's great publicity for sure. I must make the delivery man take a picture of your as you hold my bundle.…”

“When have I said that I am a fan of yours?”

The bantering.  
The constant struggle for dominance.  
The playful digs.  
The retorts.  
All that was feeling as they had never stopped to do any of those.  
All that was feeling like they _both_ were _home_.

After having confessed they were supporters of their respective careers, the two men exited from Tsukishima's dressing room.  
Both’s crew were expecting for each one and they had little time left to talk before they had to part again.

“So… Tadashi and Hitoka are about to marry, right?”

“Yes. It won't be long before it…”

“How cliché… from high school sweethearts to marriage…” **NOTE C**

_Stupid. It's not a cliché when you truly love someone…_

“Yeah…”

“Will you go and sing at their reception, won't you?”

“Mmh. Yes I will…”

“Cute. They'll be happy. By the way… how’s your album called?”

Tsukishima lowered his sight, assuming a defensive stance.

“So?”

Kageyama was intimately pleased by Kei's hopeless timidity. He could get so shy and insecure for the most useless things, and Kageyama had always treasured that side of him. It had always ignited his protective instinct to the top.  
He would have loved to jump forward and hug the blonde haired man like he had been used to years before, but he knew that wasn't his place anymore.  
He couldn't be at Kei's side anymore.  
It was something impossible to work over, that mutual need they had which they couldn't truly fight for, neither of them, in the end.

“Strawberry…”

“Say it louder… since when you are one to eat your words with me?”

Tsukishima felt it like a whip had hit his back: suddenly regaining all his imposing height over Kageyama, looking directly at him he shouted:

“Strawberry Shortcake!”

Kageyama for a few second stayed put, motionless and looking at Tsukishima from the nearest he had in years.   
His face was clueless.  
Behind his eyes, a grey line of nothingness.

“You… really _didn't_ call it so, right?”

Tsukishima scrunched at him, the pliant nose and his expression as smug as ever.  
They looked both like they were back in their first year at Karasuno, when every worded exchange between them used to sound like a declaration of war between a stubborn barbarian and a stuck up ministry.

“I did.”

The little corridor was suddenly filled with the outburst of Kageyama's own laughing screech.

“You did… of course… you did…”

There was no way to stop Kageyama once he would burst up in such carefree laugh. Tears were forming at the corner of his eyes and Tsukishima realized he was still in love with anything that absurdly in his own world idiot was.

Not that he had the intention to let him know.

But he would have loved to get to register that laughing sound.

_You still look like a kid when you laugh. The most beautiful, endearing kid…_

“Stop it… stop… it!”

There was no formula known to the human population to halt Kageyama's laugh. But Tsukishima used the one he had discovered which could make him freeze. In their past, that had been an infallible way to gain Kageyama's full attention, making everything else less important to him than hearing it. Well, _almost everything else_. He would still focus on volleyball more, but that was not a battle anybody could win concerning that guy anyway.

“We are in front of our people… c’mon… stop it _Tobio…_ ”

Tsukishima looked like in slow motion at the way Kageyama's eyes, which were a tiny slit filled with laughing tears, shook open at his name being called. He looked at the way his pupils became first a small button, then a big one; he looked at the way those beautiful eyes seemed to pass out, and then shine even more, as his face turned to his own, shocked, but pleased, until the lips of the younger man parted, and it seemed to Tsukishima as they were ready to move and speak something, but they didn't.

They had been joined by their staffs.

It was time for another goodbye.

“Take care of yourself, and don't overwork your body, right King?”

The light was still in Kageyama's eyes. A twinkling dark ocean blue was all Tsukishima could see.

“I won't. And you… don't disappear forever again, okay?”

_Say it… please say it once more… say my name, King…_

“I will be on tour until next Spring… but who knows, we might get to cross paths again before Spring ends…”

_Please… say it…_

“It would make me very happy. Until then… take care yourself, too…”

_Say it… Say it again…_

“…Kei.”

Nodding his approval, Tsukishima shut his eyes while waving Kageyama's goodbye.  
He couldn't look at him after that greeting.  
In his golden eyes tears would gather if he had.  
And if he would turn and look back, Kageyama would _see everything out of him_ even before realizing he would be on the verge of tears, parting newly from him.  
And it would have been uselessly wonderful and uselessly painful to let them both leave and live with that receipt.  
So Tsukishima fought all of himself with all of his own forces, and let the tv studios forcing his brain to think what he had chosen to do was the only possible thing to do.

Coming home after the promise they would keep in touch with one another, the unknowing Kageyama felt lighter.  
There was a fable sense of belonging that evening had left him to toy with which had placed a giddy and comforting happiness inside his chest.  
Not one to overthink those kind of inheritances by habit, the young man went into his workout space to drink some low fat milk before going to bed.  
Inadvertently he pushed over the fridge control pad the button which would bring down the tv screens from the ceiling, and remembering how Hinata had warned him to never stop the set up process until it went down completely before turning it off again, he told himself he would check how many mails he had gotten, since that day he had not checked any.  
His plan was to avoid to answer any of them and go anyway to bed. Checking mails and messages and acting after the checking were two very differently timed routines in his life.  
But it took enough to see the name of the sender topping the list of his incoming posts to forget that plan of his, and to forget also to check whoever else had actually cared to write him in those hours beside that one person.  
Fidgeting a little, his milk box in one hand, the straw of it in the other, Kageyama stared at the giant screen, and at that popping name at the top of his scroll of contacts.

_Tooru (2)_

A sigh exhaled from his lips, still dry and milk deprived.  
Scuffing his head, he tried to do the right thing and keep his mental word he would just check the number of emails he had gotten, to maybe decide about reading some of them the day after, to maybe decide to answer just a couple of those the day further following that one; but then he moved to the couch and with the holographic keyboard he had made appear in front of him there he opened the first one of Oikawa's emails, mumbling closemouthed sounds while at it.

_Hi there, Tobio chan! ^.^_   
_How’s going in Italy? Have you already made some acquaintances or are you the usual dead fish?_   
_I hope things are shaping up fine over there in that wondrous Country._   
_I am writing to actually ask you to monitor your bruxism. In the next days I will send you a special monitor for it so please write me your address while answering this mail, and then in the package I will also send an information note about what to do with the monitor._   
_I promise it will be easy peasy to take care of. Even for you._   
_Am I a great doctor or what?_   
_Don't worry, I will never let you get rotten under my watch, also because, you have to know, I am soon becoming the headmaster of the National Team Medical Staff._   
_Well, it won't be very immediate but I am already the vice and I am not even 30 so it's bound to happen sooner than later, right?_   
_Then I will take the best care of our most precious Tobio chan ^.^_   
_Ok. I think I told you everything. Catch you soon and remember to write me your address ok? Postal codes and all, don't forget!_

_Tooru The Great ^.^¥_

Kageyama for a long minute didn't move.  
Stupid Oikawa.  
Stupid emojis.  
An almost 30 years old writing emails like a child would.  
Stupid.  
What kind of thing was that?

Kageyama remembered their last meeting in Oikawa's ambulatory room.  
His pleading chocolate eyes asking him, more than his voice, to stay to hold him longer; stupid Oikawa… talking about his bruxism?  
Kageyama wasn't even convinced that was a pathology… **NOTE 3**

Suddenly the memory of the first time Oikawa had mentioned that disturbed tendency he had resurfaced from Kageyama's memories, a vivid ghost from a past which belonged to the end of his college years.  
It had happened after one of their first nights together.  
He remembered waking up, lazy in a worn out bed after dark hours spent abusing it, to meet Oikawa's eyes gingerly inspecting his face.  
That wrapped up expression of his former senpai had instantly etched itself into his mind forever.

_“Tobio… do you know you clench your teeth a lot when you sleep?”_

_“What? No?”_

_“You do. I thought I remembered you doing it when falling asleep after our games, either on bus or on a plane but I thought it was because it was hard for you to dim the game tension… the fact you normally do it instead… we shall investigate about it!”_

Kageyama chuckled in the silence of his Italian house remembering how he had thought then Oikawa was a natural born doctor almost as much as he had been a natural born setter. Then the memory went to how he had grabbed his face with his hands to shut a stupid morning diagnosis with a kiss so long and deep Oikawa had to break free from it to get breathing allowance.

At that, he shushed off the vision.

It wasn't a good time to remember more.  
Not before a night in solitude in a far away Country.

“I better check what else that idiot has sent me…”

Then Kageyama opened the second mail from Oikawa.

_I miss you already, Tobio._   
_Please, let me know where you live…_   
_I just need to know._   
_I need to see what you see when you wake up, I need to Google Map your surroundings, to imagine me and you walking around together._   
_Please, write me your address._   
_Since you’ve been gone, there isn't anything good for me round here anymore…_

_I love you,_   
_Tooru <3_

Kageyama once again sat still, seemingly petrified.  
But then his fists tightened, and his chest surged hastily, before he put his right hand over it, to mechanically slow his breath back down.

Stupid Oikawa.  
Stupid Oikawa and his empty, stupidly hyperbolic words.  
Claims of love Oikawa surely did believe in, but not enough to act on them.  
Not that he did care, as he did not know what love actually was.  
But even unaware, Kageyama did remember what Oikawa told him love was, in a meeting at Kitagawa many years before where he had felt so happy they had come to talk. **NOTE D**

Stupid Oikawa, and his claims of a kind of love which had to be a subpar version of what love was supposed to be, since he himself had taught him back that night in Kitagawa backyard how for love one had to treasure the other beyond his own self, sacrificing anything else for it.

Love… Oikawa couldn't treasure it, because he had not sacrificed not even one of his days for what he claimed he felt.

Solidity, public image, convenience…  
Those were the things Oikawa Tooru treasured, those the only things he was ready to spend his energies for.  
And while Kageyama was well aware he hadn't the concept of love in himself, though never confessing any for anyone, at least he could claim he had never betrayed no one.  
While Oikawa Tooru…  
He was talking about love like he knew, and maybe he did, but in what's name he had betrayed that so called _love_ , and then betrayed Nanako, his beautiful wife, and essentially… betrayed himself mostly?

Sure, Kageyama Tobio knew zero about love.  
But why willing to change, if all love seemed to request and suggest was sufferance and lies and deceit?

Volley could never ask for anything like that.  
Volley was a fair empire.  
Volley was a simple world of emotionally charged exchanges where no lies could find place.  
You battle, you try your best, then you either lose or you win.  
No doubts.  
No acts.  
No gambles.  
No casualties, at least not permanently.  
Volley was his only possible love.  
The only thing he would sacrifice all of his days for, with no regrets.

Oikawa…  
Well, Oikawa had given up also volley.  
Kageyama was still disappointed about it the most.

Glancing once more at the end of Oikawa's written note, Kageyama shut all the system down, his motions calm, and took the stairs to go to sleep.  
Over the couch, spilling from the straw, his full milk box had fallen from his sudden surge.  
He hadn't sipped even a drop out of it.

Into his bed, he ordered himself to sleep, calling up his own genius and amazing hyper focusing skill for it, like he would effortlessly use his supreme power of concentration and sensing during his plays, to force his body into an imposed shut down.  
He had better avoided it, because as intensely as he wanted to obtain rest and break free from memories he didn't want to get troubled from, all that Kageyama ended up managing to get was the most detailed lucid dream, instead.

His mental hyperfocusing talent would seldom produce those in his sleeping nights, **NOTE E** and as his uncle and his former senpai Sugawara had explained to him, quite often his lucid dreams would be entire memories of his days, as clear as a movie in front of him, where he could also see himself from the outside.  
The power of a genius’ mind could be extraordinary.  
And also extraordinarily unrequested, and very uncalled for.

~~~~

A light coming from the side of a lived up room.  
Two young men very close to one another.  
A book filled with old pictures in the lap of the one of them with chocolate hair.  
A relaxed and cozy atmosphere, and talks filled with subdued laughter and eye-opening skinship.

“Oh, Tobio… you were the cutest child back there at Kitagawa… look at you! Such a lovely, round head… your puffy, rosy cheeks… and no scowl at all!” **NOTE 4**

“As if… and you were the one putting a scowl on me?”

“Nope! When you started ruining your face with that dreadful expression constantly knitting together your eyebrows I was long gone from there? It was all Kindaichi and Kunimi’s fault… and maybe that terrible coach you guys had back then… but look at you!! Your face in this picture gawwwh so so cute!”

The brown haired man had crashed on the mattress enthusiastically lying down fully, keeping the book over his head, giggling at the picture which had to be his longtime favorite out of the lot. The other man, with hair of a shiny black, was keeping his back straight, and looking down at the other, he was trying to guess what could be so mesmerizing about an old schoolbook.  
But onto his serious face, it could be seen a trace of infinite gratification as he would scan the other’s face from under the open book to find it gladdened with the most sincere of smiles.

“It's not all about beauty you know…”

“Of course it is instead… what would be the point in finding yourself somebody ugly to look at?”

The picture maven would straight his back up again until the two young man’s faces would be at breathing distance, and then the more serious man would keep asking out:

“Except that people are so much more than looks?”

“You don't tell me, Einstein? I do know that. My point is another tho. Why falling for uglies when you can fall for beauties? That is just so much more natural… and more… convenient?”

“It's not like only good looking people find a partner…”

“True. That's true. But think better how many times they are forced to take uglies up because they are in no position to aim at the handsome ranks?”

“Tooru… you are just so shallow…”

At that the voice of the raven haired would sound more acquiescent than reproaching and he would swing even nearer than he already was to the other man.

“I am definitely not. You are mean to me, like always… I am not shallow: I am an aesthete. And face it: the world entirely revolves on beauty…”

“Really…”

“Really. Yup. _Really_. And let's admit it… there are tons of people who are very smart and very attractive too. Look at me…”

“You truly are… something else…”

And a little and all forgiving chuckle would then escape from the stoic looking one’s mouth.

“I am just a product of centuries of well directed evolution Tobio… What I am saying is real. If great people with great looks search for their matches in the same spectrum, what are you getting?”

“A lot of smug and self-centered specimens like you?”

“Meanieeeee!!!! But no. That's not it. You get a great pool of evolving genes. And you’ve majored in philosophy… you know what I am saying makes sense.”

“It might… but presented like you do present it… it sounds quite scary.”

The brown haired man would move himself more attached to the other’s body, intertwining their arms and legs, searching for their foreheads to scrape gently together, until their reciprocal eyes would be the only thing they would look at.

“Tobio… my darling Tobio… this is not scary. As a scholar in Medicine I tell you this is Nature’s plan to protect us all. To match top creatures is the best way to progress. Not that the rest out of it is bad or has no dignity… not at all! But that is just ok… it’s not what will make humanity go further. Beauty calls for beauty, and brain calls for brain… not because we superficially like those things, but because it's a natural inclination which is preparatory for a more valuable stream of evolutional pattern.”

The way Oikawa would glow while passionately explain all this would make Kageyama's eyes sparkle.  
Years of college had widened Kageyama's vocabulary and his attention span at not volleyball things enough to allow him at being perfectly able to follow his former senpai's not uncommon visionary speeches; he would feel the abstraction trespassing off of Oikawa's grandiose depictions inhabit his own being in a quite osmotic way then, so that his whole body would wince at times for each new superlative adjective the other would pick to describe his theories.  
Oikawa had in him to make his words and gestures propel everybody's expectations about their own lives and the world in its entirety.  
He was a charming man whose charisma could ring into people's minds effortlessly.

“I’d believe you… and it all sounds actually very thought of… if…”

“If?”

“If this wasn't in the end just another one of your tricks to bolster about yourself.”

“What? But I started all this by remembering how _YOU_ were so cute when we first met? How can it be about me?”

“Isn't all about you in your world anyway?”

Oikawa would assume a pouting expression which looked so dear in Kageyama's eyes he couldn't avoid to smile at him. That could never suffice for the elder man to loosen it or to stop his stubborn long face, so the younger would come approaching him, embracing his shoulder until their bodies would remain completely connected.

“Look… unlike me… you are extraordinarily pretty even when sulking or knitting eyebrows, Tooru…” 

While whispering those words in Oikawa's ears, Kageyama would lean aside his neck to kiss him on the curve of his exposed nape. Oikawa, turning then slowly to face his lover, enraptured by the delicacy and the reverie of his former kouhai who would start to kiss his eyelids gently, would move carefully near his nose, until all he could focus on would be Kageyama's eyes, fixed on his own lips.

“Like this… you’ll have me… melt…”

“Good thing…as I like it a lot when you melt in my arms, Tooru…”

“But… I can't… I gotta… go…home… I just wanted… to bring you our old schoolbook when we both… were in Kitagawa…”

“Sure then… go… my door is open…”

Kageyama would tell Oikawa while still lingering over his lips, eyes lidded with want and desire.

“I have… to…”

Kageyama’s hands would go down on Oikawa’s body, sliding slowly and drifting air over his skin, making him chill out and then shiver, and then feeling everything burning inside.

“I won’t stop you if you have to go…”

And while saying that, Kageyama's chilly right thumb would tickle Oikawa's nipple, already popping out, making the older squirm and pant.

“I have to… but I got no forces against you… against… this…”

Kageyama would deviously smile, eyes set on fire, the right hand possessively wandering from Tooru’s nipple to his whole left breast, firm and hairless. A true Japanese skin. Then he would grab the flesh underlining the muscled and strong curve of Oikawa's chest until the other would moan under the touch.

“Good… stay with me then… I’ll make you feel like you are the most beautiful creature on Earth…”

And that would make Oikawa finally come undone; because the vanity in him would never resist to such a promise, to have that royal kouhai of his making him feel like he was the most spectacular being who had ever existed. To have the prideful, combative Kageyama Tobio claim him as his most precious possession would blank all of Oikawa's other thoughts, until all he would ask for himself would be to become one with the man he had feared the most for the best part of his life.

To tame that fear, by becoming one with the source of it: that would make Oikawa at once weak, and all mighty.

“Be one with me… Tobio…”

And like other times, Kageyama would oblige, firstly nudging his hardened cock at the entrance of Oikawa's asshole, hairless and bright pink, just to move it far away, earning himself a disappointed grunt; he would then put his index finger on his lips, to ask for patience and silence, before diving south with his tongue and preparing Oikawa's entrance with a truly skillful treatment.  
Oikawa would put his hand over Kageyama's head working him out, to try to move it away, only to push it further in instead.

“You are so beautiful, all lewd and thirsty for me… look at me… look at me now, Tooru…”

And sinuously twisting himself, Oikawa would look: eyes into the eyes, they would both cut their own breaths, until Kageyama would impulsively come up from in between Oikawa's legs to grab his face with both hands.   
There would always be a moment at the start of their intercourse where Oikawa would look at Kageyama with a battling glare, in every way as menacing and fierce as the one he had been used to launch at him anytime they would face off on a court on the opposite sides of a net.   
Oikawa would not be able to save Kageyama from that hung up and smug expression, a survival of his days of envy towards his junior God given talent, not even when in the middle of conceding himself to him in the most intimate and submissive of ways.

But Kageyama would easily confess to love exactly that stuck up face. Like in their days of competition that face would remind him of a gap between them he would always try to cover and erase, and that impulse and that conjecture would set an eternal flame into his chest he could never be strong enough to deny. 

“I’ll wipe your grin out of your handsome face, _Oikawa San_ …”

“Will you? Try… show me how, _Tobio chan…_ ”

And Kageyama would definitely show him.  
Kissing and licking all of Oikawa's skin, pressing his hands down his flesh as to explore and marking every single inch of it, Kageyama would find all the erogenous spots easily, earning himself a concert of differently toned moans from his former senpai, each one of them increasing the hardness of both in blissful ways.

“Tobio… touch me… touch mine… I…”

And melting into the requested touch, Oikawa would become lovingly in his facial features, surrendering to his young master. The glint out of Oikawa's eyes, the tears forming at the corner of them out of his pleasured and throbbing member, would be for Kageyama the sign he had won him over fully.  
It would be the sign the Great Oikawa Tooru had finally, completely, unequivocally surrendered to him.

That surrender, being what Kageyama would look out for the most would make the raven haired man intoxicated by the singled out moment when he would physically see and feel in both’s bodies reactions that he had completely won Oikawa over.

Just like in everything else, naturally, Kageyama Tobio would act as ruling King also during sex.

But it had to be clear to the King how Oikawa, the great Oikawa, would never surrender all that easily.  
Much like during their teenage times, when both would feel the urge to surpass the other Oikawa would fray Kageyama's supremacy with his sharpest will, and his most poignant glare, in his full capacity, only to give up at the end, when the rush of his arousal and his inmost and truest sentiment and need for the other would prevail.

Never without that initial spark of hostility tho.

Much like it had happened when they had been players squabbling, Oikawa would never, ever come out easy to conquer.  
Oikawa's pride could never waver.  
He would each single time be a valiant antagonist of Kageyama's meant to happen final win over him.  
Destiny had decided in his own place how Oikawa would never be actually able to defeat his god gifted kouhai.  
So his will to fight, his self-regard and narcissism would be sustained to prove that his falling, although bound to happen, could look supremely dignified and glorious.  
All Oikawa Tooru could still never barge for would be his self-worth, and he would always go to the ultimate of lengths to be tapped as hard, as _very hard_ to get.  
Oikawa Tooru would never be easy to claim.  
No matter the field.

Much of the admiration Kageyama would preserve for Oikawa under any case, had to do especially with his appreciation of that presumption of his.

But then, aroused by their mutual need of final coupling they would kiss with passionate urge and get deeper and deeper with it, until nothing else of them could live outside of their own shared space, each one scratching the other’s skin as the only way to not detach would be to bleed together as much as to come together.  
Dazed by the waves of heath running in his body, Oikawa would beg for Kageyama to take him to let him come free and he would, making his fingers slide back into Oikawa's hole, scissoring once, twice, thrice and then, at the breathless request of the older, exchanging his fingers with his cock, he would thrust into the other with no reverie nor mercy, conscious of the way Oikawa would like to splurge his semen best, any time.

And after all the scratches and all the words and all the groans, they would come, often very much at the same time, screaming out loud, one, while huffing his releasing incoherent rant , the other, until their bodies would tighten, exhausted, in an embrace made of sweat and amazement with an undefinable buzz into their insides coming to a peak and then fading out languidly.

They would both look at their most gorgeous apex at the end of their conjunction.  
And after it all, as they would catch their breaths and senses, they would _always_ try to say something to the other:

“I think you are right, Tooru… we all try to find beauty… and even when we don’t sometimes beauty comes suddenly at us, gracing us… and it never leaves our minds…”

Oikawa would be playing with Kageyama's dark silky streams of hair, an habit of his post coital beatitude. He had long before realized how he loved the reflexes of blue his hair had.

“Is that so…”

Kageyama would laugh discerningly, a sound very rare off him, and all the more unforgettable for it.

“You know Tooru… when you are blissed out after this we do… you even become oblivious to compliments…” Kageyama would kiss Oikawa's forehead before kissing him on the lips once more, chaste but nonetheless alluring in his own way, whispering eventually into his ear how beauty had once marked his soul indelibly.  
All blushing, Oikawa would realize and would ask him:

“So… what of me… has… caught up on you…”

Lazily but attentively focusing on Oikawa's lips, Kageyama would softly confess it had to be his back arching.

“You… pervert… I have to arch it… you are big to take in you know…”

Kageyama would suddenly attack the insides of Oikawa's mouth, so promptly and skillfully the other would escape to not choke.

“Your little whining turns me so much on… and… I wasn't describing your back arching in those moments… you idiot…”

“Between me and you, the idiot can't be me, Tobio…”

Kageyama would kiss Tooru anew, starting a tray of minute peppered smooches all over his back, tracing his shoulder blades, diving down on his back line with enthusiastic exuberance, a kind of reaction, so lively and shiny, not many could have guessed he was able to give.

“Oh my… Tobio…stop it please…”

“But you love me doing it…”

Oikawa would escape from his lover’s grab, turning on his back and taking Kageyama's face in his hands, looking at him with a grateful and conquered expression which had made the other feel a kind of contentment only those encounters had been able to let him feel.

“I think… that I fell under the spell of your playing form way back, Tooru… though I never realized it was something affectionate that way, if not much later on…”

And Kageyama would then caress back Oikawa's cheek, which had began blushing.

“For many years I thought it was just admiration…”

“Tobio…”

“The way your back was arching while I first saw you serving…You know, I remember every single time I have been gazing at you performing your serves in Kitagawa. I remember thinking I shall have looked elsewhere, I remember the way I wanted to stop looking… except that I wasn't able to do it. I… remember…” and Kageyama had started to kiss from Oikawa's ear to his eye: “… the way my breath hitched… and the way my heart clenched…”

Lost in the shivers of the kisses and the breathy words coming from Kageyama's mouth, Oikawa would try to replicate:

“It had to be volley… of course…”

“Why do you sound disappointed…”

“You are the biggest… fool…”

Kageyama would come to bite Oikawa's neck, then licking the wound lewdly he would oppose to his words:

“No. I am not… and you can't understand what I mean… there… back then… you appeared right before my eyes and you were _the form_ , the perfect form of what had my heart then, and still has my heart now. You were… the most beautiful thing…”

Kageyama would dive south once more to kiss Oikawa's exposed skin near to his pelvis.

“… and you still are.”

Moaning at the connection of Kageyama's lips to the tip of his resurging cock, Oikawa would try to counter, muffling his excitement:

“But I have stopped playing a while ago…”

Kageyama at that would lick his own lips, before sliding his fist down pumping on Oikawa's hardening best friend, keeping slurping on the indents of his narrowing hips, until he would slide to mouth the inner thigh of Oikawa.

“Not in my mind… and surely, never in my heart.”

And avoiding Oikawa's completely red face, Kageyama would began tasting on his member, transforming the room in a concert of moans and cries, as they would get ready for another round of their forbidden and lustrous bond, in a room lighted up by the side and with an old schoolbook staying opened in the middle of it, at the page where a little kid with round head and glistening blue eyes was pictured smiling holding proudly a volleyball with both his hands.

~~~~

Surging up in his bed like a real live wire, Kageyama woke up in a sweat, shaking as he was feeling cold and getting angry from his way too lucid dream.  
His chest ruthless and having, his physical perceptions all awakened and sharp.

Those horrible lucid dreams were always a bad nuisance, any time they'd come.

“Stupid… Tooru…”

And in the darkness of his lone night, as he was clenching his fists so tight his polished nails were coming into his palms’ flesh dangerously, a single tear of frustrating, unnerving vexation spilled from his left eye.

He would never understand how people could deny their own basic instincts so majorly, nor how they could fake normal happiness like they could simply chose to wear a shirt of one color rather than another in the morning.

He would never understand why Oikawa Tooru had decided to marry to have a normal family and then why after doing it he was keeping pestering him telling constantly he was in love with him instead, without getting any nearer to become a father, or a proper husband to his prestigious wife as he had sworn he would.

He would never, ever understand why even living at the opposite side of the world from him, he could appear into his life and flap it down under that way.

Stupid Oikawa.

Stupid…

Stupid.

Stupid life, where people who don’t lie can have it hard to understand a world made up by the choices of people who happily lie day after day, unaffected.

Not that he did _truly_ care… but it was annoying how he couldn't command to his body and mind to stop to care also, at least enough to let him sleep fruitfully at nights.

Stupid.

Everything sometimes was just so, so stupid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **NOTE A, B, C, D, E** : All events and notations reported by these alphabetic notes are placed in the other fictions I created for this saga. In this specific cases, they all refer to events of Okurimono or of Shingetsu No Kaihatsu which have been already published at the time of this chapter upload.
> 
> **NOTE 1, 2, 3, 4** : All events and notations reported with an number are instead common facts out from the canon manga and anime. Like the fact Kageyama may seem to bea slightly effected by bruxism.
> 
> **BRUXISM** is excessive teeth grinding or jaw clenching.It is an oral parafunctional activity which is unrelated to normal function such as eating or talking. Bruxism is a common behavior; reports of prevalence range from 8–31% in the general population but symptoms may be minimal, without patient awareness of the condition. There is evidence that sleep bruxism is caused by mechanisms related to the central nervous system, involving sleep arousal and neurotransmitter abnormalities. Underlying these factors may be psychosocial factors including daytime stress which is disrupting peaceful sleep. Sleep bruxism is mainly characterized by "rhythmic masticatory muscle activity" (RMMA) at a frequency of about once per second, and also with occasional tooth grinding.Work-related stress and irregular work shifts may also be involved. Personality traits are also commonly discussed in publications concerning the causes of bruxism, e.g. aggressive, competitive or hyperactive personality types. Some suggest that suppressed anger or frustration can contribute to bruxism. **NOTE of AUTHOR** Since causes of bruxism can be related to an abnormal activity (overactivity) of brain, **it works awesomely with my theory that Kageyama has an hyperactivated, hyper-focused brain,** and that matches greatly with his canon showed tendency to bruxism, too.
> 
> **Lucid Dreaming and Hyper-focused Mind** A lucid dream is a dream during which the dreamer is aware of dreaming. During lucid dreaming, the dreamer may be able to exert some degree of control over the dream characters, narrative, and environment.  
> It is a phenomenon known already by Ancient Greeks (Atistotle wrote about it) and during modern times it has been a studied phenomenon often investigated also for therapeutic purposes. Hyper-focused minds can be performing lucid dreams easier than most. In fact, hyper-focused minds can manipulate their memories into lucid dreams consciously, and being observers in those of their own actions of the past. During crime investigations, this kind of possibility human hyper-focused brain has shown to possess has been used to solve cases, by making people observing themselves in a memory from outside to grasp details of it the normal remembrance couldn't recall. **NOTE of AUTHOR** Following these premises **it works again supremely well that Kageyama , who has hyper-focusing mind in my writings, (that was explained in Okurimono, and I stand by my medical intuition there)** can experience here in this chapter a dream which is a full memory of a past experience, visualizing even himself in it as he could be a VIEWER of the whole scene there. As usual, I am extremely careful and realistic in anything which I try to create in my developed universe. ;)


	5. Forget Me, Forget Me Not

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Forget Me Not Flower Meaning:**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> ° True and undying love
> 
> ° Remembrance during partings or after death
> 
> ° A connection that lasts through time
> 
> ° Fidelity and loyalty in a relationship, despite separation or other challenges
> 
> ° Reminders of your favorite memories or time together with another person
> 
> ° Growing affection between two people

Tsukishima came back to his hotel room, trying his hardest not to think consciously of _anything_ which had just happened that night.  
Years of self-control and his undeniable capacity of understanding others and himself had made it natural for him to be able to sense danger in his own fibers enough to test his endurance and skill at manipulating those sources of trouble before they could bloom and manifest in full effect, affecting his existence for the worst.  
For all of his life, since the shock of finding his brother’s lies uncovered in a quiet afternoon in a gym hosting some high school volley tournament had cut his soul in two **NOTE 1** Tsukishima Kei had realized he was a very sensitive type of person.  
An over sensitive, way too perceptive for his own good kind of person.  
For a while, he had tried with all his might to shield himself from pain derived from his sensitivity through isolation and smugness.  
If people would feel rejected and judged by him, they would never try to approach him and solitude would have meant for him, he used to think in his teenage early times, that no attachment would have blossomed inside of his heart.  
No attachment would have lead to no involvement.  
No involvement would have lead to no hopes.  
And no hopes would have meant nobody and nothing would have ever been in the position of shatter his heart again, fulfilling him with disappointment, rage, regret and hurt.  
Then high school had happened.  
And in spite of all of his efforts to keep maintaining his aura of determination at pushing away from himself people and situations, he had fallen for all that he had hoped to avoid: he had fallen for a sport, for an entire new bunch of friends... and for a stupid, idiot, absolutely impossible setter he was still subjected to, like a devotee knight to a supreme King.

Work.  
Work had often been the better answer to all of his emotional turmoils.  
Tsukishima sighed and took a look around in the hotel room.

He sat at the polished and designed desk he had previously left perfectly kept with all of his personal electronic devices and opened his agenda and his laptop.  
His next big commitment was to be an attending of a music Festival in Switzerland, before some more European tasks would be put on the map following Hitoka and Tadashi’s nuptials back in Japan.  
Checking the list of the fellow festival attendees, he smiled finding some names he had grown accustomed to in recent times.

Music world in the 20s was an ever changing circus which he liked enough without having grown seriously dependent to it.  
It was a good environment, but he was always telling himself the day all the stardust would be shrugged off of him, he would have lived happily and without regrets for it, satisfied to have been given a shot many others would never acquire for themselves.  
Show biz Tsukishima Kei was like a jellyfish into the infinite ocean.  
Fragile yet deadly, transparent yet full of untold surprises, a creature made to pass through all kinds of currents with grace and apparently without a direction, but in fact aiming exactly for the place he had to be to survive best.

He logged into the artists area in the festival website, and realized a mash up of songs from the various stars bound to attend that was in the sonic background of it.  
He was not famous enough internationally to be one of the headliners of the event but he was coming for all of them. He was to be the opener for one of said headliners, a person he had come to cross paths with previously a couple of times and who had seemed nice enough to him to not feel any bitterly about his achievements and position in the scene.

He was small and cute despite having at that point enough age to be considered differently than “cute” and somehow he reminded him of Hinata.  
Probably just because he was quite short and loud.  
The quality of his voice though was rich and deep and fit for a variety of ranges, from soul to beat pop, from R’n’B to funk.  
Hesitating over his name on the website, Tsukishima allowed the system to start playing in the background a medley of old songs exactly of that artist, and unfortunately, the first one of them hit him right in the core of his chest.

Bad luck.

“This is gonna hurt but I blame myself first,  
Cause I ignored the truth  
Drunk off that love, my head up  
There’s no forgetting you...”  
Tsukishima couldn’t even attempt a diversion, because as the words started to be pronounced and sung, immediately the face of Kageyama appeared before his eyes, making his heart squeeze.

“You’ve awoken me, but you’re choking me  
I was so obsessed  
Gave you all of me, and now honestly, I got nothing left  
I loved you dangerously  
More than the air that I breathe”  
Why it was constantly happening to him that a lot of pitiful and corny love songs would all remind him of his first ever love?  
He had gotten other lovers...  
Other lovers after him.  
Then why, why the only face he was keeping in his memory out of all those lovers was just Kageyama’s?

“Knew we would crash at the speed that we were going  
Didn’t care if the explosion ruined me  
Baby, I loved you dangerously  
Mmmm, mmmm  
I loved you dangerously”  


Loved... Or was that he was still _loving him_?

“Usually, I hold the power with both my hands  
Tied behind my back  
Look at how things change, 'cause now you’re the train  
And I’m tied to the track  
You’ve awoken me, but you’re choking me  
I was so obsessed...  
Gave you all of me, and now honestly, I got nothing left  
'Cause I loved you dangerously  
More than the air that I breathe...  
Knew we would crash at the speed that we were going  
Didn’t care if the explosion ruined me  
Baby, I loved you dangerously  
You took me down, down, down, down  
And kissed my lips quick goodbye  
I see it now, now, now, now  
It was a matter of time  
You know I know, there’s only one place this could lead”  


Lost in the feelings he had never been able to eradicate from his soul, Tsukishima remembered all the kisses he had exchanged with Kageyama through the times of their relationship.  


He could remember clearly _all of them_ , without fail.  
The first ones, at the start of their road together: tempting and full of surprise and delight; the ones which had followed those, more playful and satisfying as their connection had started to grow and expand; the ones which had a comforting quality to them, the unfathomable power which lovers exchange when they feel at ease and belonging to one another; and then those almost stolen, in times where and when they weren’t supposed to be lovers anymore, but which couldn’t be denied or banned from happening once they had met again...

“But you are the fire, I’m gasoline  
I love you, I love you, I love you  
I loved you dangerously  
Ooh, more than the air that I breathe...  
Oh now, knew we would crash at the speed that we were going  
Didn’t care if the explosion ruined me  
Oh, oh baby, I loved you dangerously  
Mmmm, mmmm  
Ooh, I loved you dangerously...”  


The song had finished and the mix had progressed into another **Charlie Puth’s song** , and Tsukishima felt awkwardly let down by the change in the notes and the vibe, like he had wanted more time to recall all of his kisses with his long lost lover.  


Because that was what Kageyama was still for him.  
He was still in love with him, and he knew he would always feel like that towards him.  
Uselessly in love.  
Consciously aware that that sentiment of his could never mean anything but pain in his life, and still he was treasuring that pain as well, because it was a sort of measure of the truth in his heart.

“Ah, King... why do you have to love a sport more than humans around you... We’ll never be enough to satiate your thirst, won’t we...”

But although these were the words Tsukishima had muttered in the secrecy of his hotel room, he had never blamed Kageyama for his life choices.  
He had never hoped or thought the other could sacrifice his sport destiny for no one and nothing.  
He knew him too well.  
And he had never felt Kageyama had been wrong about that.  
Anyone has a destiny and a purpose in life.  
It would be pointless and stupid to fight against something as big as Fate.

Tsukishima went back with his memory at the last day they had spent as Karasuno students, and the voice of Kageyama spread in his mind like a bewitching echo:

“Never forget my convictions about you. I won’t let you ever forget them, no matter what we’re gonna do from now on. I don’t mean anything more than this, I don’t want you to feel stuck with me, because I am not somebody who can take care of people, and you know it. I just want you to remember that I have always thought great of you. And I always will. So don’t ever start to think back that you don’t value. You do value tons. Never forget the way I thought, I think and I am gonna forever think you value.”

A tiny smirk surfaced on Tsukishima’s face; stupid King and his need to make sure he would have never gotten back to his self bashing habits. Stupid King... so lovingly and still always so commanding, even while telling others they were awesome.  


Stupid King... _You CAN take care of people, you insane freak... it’s just that you don’t want to steal time because of them to volley..._  
Tsukishima recalled also his own words at his companion that day, his own answer at the request of his no more setter:

“And you never forget you’re way more than just a volleyball idiot. Never think of people just as players. Remember I’ve never ever considered you only as one. And I never will. Even if we go in opposite directions, be sure I’ll never let you consider yourself just the King of the Court. There’s so much more than being a volleyball genius in you, Tobio...”

At that swift reminiscence, Tsukishima sighed again. Kageyama had looked at him so shocked that day after he had called him by name at the end of his speech... the quality of the blue in his eyes in that moment had never been matched by any other kind of blue he had witnessed in his multiple traveling all over the world, may those blues being a belonging of people’s or things he had stopped his eyes over in the curses of his life nomadic targets.  
It had been like he had won a part of Kageyama’s soul that day with that answer, a part so big the other had felt powerless in replying again, as no more words would ever be needed between them since the most important ones had already been spoken.  
He had just come to embrace him, mute and strong, and after that Tsukishima had knew Kageyama would have never betrayed their bond of trust and acceptance they had established and sealed right there at their goodbye milestone.  
Not because they would still be lovers after that goodbye, and they didn’t, but because they had both acknowledged what they had shared as young and improbable lovers and teammates in Karasuno would forever be a fundamental part of them as human beings after.

“And I still stupidly watch all of your games whenever I can, of course... so you could have admitted easier how you are a fan of my music, today, you ungrateful King... I am sure you do know about the whole of my career, too.”

Tsukishima toyed a bit with his laptop, undecided if he had to make some of the mixes he had promised he would make to Tobio immediately; he stayed motionless for a while, eyes closed, keeping having way too many thoughts and feelings to be productive.

They had certainly followed each other’s career for years.  
He knew they had.  
It could have felt like they had tried their own best to never allow the other to forget about them.  
Was it the real reason Kei had pursued a big musical spotlight?  
To never let the brightest hope of Japan Volley dismiss his memory, like... ever?  
Kei could not really understand the primary reason behind his sudden decision to ditch the promising career he would have obtained after his College Graduation in favor of a musical bet.  
He knew he had music and art in himself: a spiritual and sensitive spirit such as his had natural inclinations towards self expression and his intelligence had helped him in honing those inclinations with practice and learning, to make him capable in multiple areas.  
But maybe the reason he had chosen to try the most difficult road for his profession had been to not been forgotten by his first love?

Too hard to get this introspective; especially late at night, thought Kei. Except that he couldn’t stop to keep talking to himself in his room, in the vain prospect of chasing away the image of Kageyama’s smile and the sound of his pure laugh from the reunion they had just been involved with that evening.

“You have to know King, that out of all of your games broadcasted, and out of all of your interviews in video, I could always tell whoever was the one you were sleeping with in the main time...” murmured again to his own ears Kei, whose observant eyes could reckon every glitch and every glint in Kageyama’s face and name them as an emotional link, pretty faultlessly.  
What had been true during the years spent as teammates and classmates, it was still a reality also so many years after.  
And what was still the most true, after all those years as well, was that all that scanning skill he had, Tsukishima Kei would devote it to the comprehension of a sole another person’s behaviors, and that the one person in question would forever be Tobio Kageyama.

“I have to write them down... fuck you King... why you’re always the one making them blossom this way into me...”

Key changed his device set up and started to sing into a tiny microphone, words and melody all pretty established like he could hear a never heard before song in the silence of his hotel room, making it come out straight from the core of his heart, already complete in its biggest chunk and quite refined in the choice of instruments and arrangements. **NOTE A**

“It’s always like this... you still my very own Muse... damn you!”

There was a tenderness in Tsukishima voice which hadn’t been captured by the registering laptop setting and which was reserved to the moment when his inspiration would visit him, almost always following thought or memories he had of Kageyama.  
Truest to his typical mood, Tsukishima would feel in need to bash his own grace, before admitting he was especially grateful for it, too.

“To have a singular Muse will make my career crash faster than others’ ones...”

But he didn’t really care about it.  
Never had.

A clipping beat of guitar and bass resembling a cut cry at points started to mold, and quickly Tsukishima began to sing a whole new song along that beat, pressing keys and sliding over buttons to modify the passages as the words would match the notes.  
He was not one to make obvious ballads, so the song was not meant to come out as a whining lament. It would rather be a lively tease.  
And he was not one to make his beg or pray sound weak, either: the way Tsukishima Kei would acknowledge once more his lovestruck wounds would be through the exposure of rivulets of chuckling gasps of happy instruments.  
His tears would never be tears good for pity.  
His tears would still be a celebration of love, because it was love which was making him feel alive for real. **(Link for listening to the music of the lyric HERE) > : https://vimeo.com/27793293**

_So how are you, my unbreakable love?_  
_Finding you in a corner of my mind again_  
_Guessing about all of your long lost traces..._  
_Do you still recall those times when we were hanging out, love?_  
_Tell me what you do, tell me where you are tonight,_  
_Do you hear this rain that falls and darkens city lights?_

_I can’t bring myself out of this room,_  
_and I don’t really want company if it’s not you..._  
_I don’t wanna sex if I can’t have love_  
_oh, but you are not like this,_  
_are you, my only fitting glove?_

_Remember me, always remember me:_  
_As the rain comes down_  
_when the sun shines and reigns after dawn_  
_Remember me and my name_  
_when the days get lost_  
_remember me always_  
_whenever night falls..._

_I can’t bring myself out of this loop,_  
_and I don’t really want anybody unless it’s you..._  
_I won’t get sex when I can’t feel love_  
_oh, but you are not like me,_  
_are you, my sinful dark dove?_

_I’m sitting here, thinking about you_  
_see, nothing changes, despite this neon flux_  
_voices make me soar, people let me live_  
_but it’s just one more day that goes_  
_where I can’t name a goal for it..._

_So where are you, my glorious love?_  
_Do you still recall our words spoken without fear of tomorrows, love?_  
_Tell me what you do, tell me how you are tonight,_  
_Do you feel like me dropping as this rain falls over city lights?_

_I can’t bring myself out of this room,_  
_and I don’t really want company if it’s not you..._  
_I don’t wanna sex if I can’t have love_  
_oh, but you are not like this,_  
_are you, my only fitting glove?_

_Remember me, always remember me:_  
_As the rain comes down_  
_when the sun shines then reigns after dawn_  
_Remember me and my name_  
_when the days get lost_  
_remember me always_  
_wherever night falls..._

“How stupid I am. It ain’t even raining, now, and knowing him, he’s fallen asleep right after he went back home...”

And saving the audio file in his most password-ed folder, Tsukishima decided to go to bed, soundly falling asleep in a dreamless night break as soon as he had lied on it still clothed up from his performance in the tv studio.

Back in his apartment after the show, Kageyama had refused to venture out with his President in some after broadcasting location set up for a party, offering his boss the excuse he would have loved to not ditch his training routine the morning after before the team would start to think he was not one to count on.  
His President had made him know that he was on him to justify his absence from the morning training with the coach, but Kageyama simply stated that he would never miss a training session with his team unless he would be seriously injured or something like a war or a major disgrace would be happening.  
At that the other stopped to try to convince him, and let him come back home driven by his personal driver, despite the fact the player would oppose the idea multiple times, finding disrespectful to let his President miss his own car service in favor of a simple employee.

“But you are not a simple employee to me, dear boy... you are my most important and cherished weapon. Tonight we’ve established a synergy, never forget this: tonight you promised me you will make my greatest dream come true!”

Kageyama had accepted the words offered, and had remarked before parting ways with the President how to keep said promise he would _certainly_ need to never skip any training futilely.

“You are a really good boy, Kageyama. And you’re right, also. I wish you could do both things, make my dream come true but also try and enjoy more your youth... but I guess one has to choose the main prize, right?”

And saying that the President had pushed Kageyama into his car, instructing the driver to take him back home.

During the ride, Kageyama had thought that for him to be able to play for a living was already the greatest prize.  
He could not understand properly why his President had sounded so regretful while pointing out that he could not “live his youth” due to training. That was not it. He didn’t feel like he was missing anything in his youth. His youth meant for him his physical ability was at peak; his youth meant essentially that he was in that short span of years where he could perform at his best; his youth meant great power, great strength, great command over any possible outcome in his career.  
He couldn’t really see why anyone would feel bad in missing a drinking night among unknown people - who would be probably very unremarkable anyway - and call that miss a lost jewel in someone’s youth.  
But he had enough experiences of different human beings by then to get how his own look at the world was a peculiarity, and he just felt satisfied his President was a man great enough to allow him being exactly himself, without unwanted trials at changing his personality and also his living frame setting up.

“Thank you for driving me home, sir... can I?...”

At the gesture of Kageyama trying to land him money to thank him for his services, the driver gently but firmly refused the payment, saying he was there to please his master and given how the master was fond of the person he had just gotten back home, that would have most definitely not been the last time he would have driven Kageyama somewhere, either.

“Take care of yourself and always remember you can count on my services as well, whenever Master says you can. Have the most pleasant rest, Mr. Kageyama. Goodnight.”

Kageyama went straight into his bedroom after taking a hot shower, a reminder of the Japan way to finish days with hot baths.  
Showers were quicker, and it was past midnight already, and Kageyama opted for a medium recall of his home country tradition, without any guilty feel to its half-assed quality.  
It had been a long and strange day, and he needed closure and blankness first and foremost before of any consideration of his domestic original requirements.

“Kei...”

A thin and unfocused image went greeting him before his eyes would shut in the dark: and a soft, keen smile placed on his face, quickly frozen in the pleasantness of a deep sleep.

The week went by establishing his new routine pattern: training at 5 am in his personal house gym; first breakfast by 7.45 am; morning training or sparring game with the team starting at 9.00 am; lunch by 12.30; Italian language private tutoring before the afternoon training or sparring afternoon game; afternoon practices; dinner; post dinner light home training; sleep. Repeat.

His teammates had started also to try to involve him in some bonding activities, each one of them assuring they would have slowly let him adjust to the Italian way of life (Kageyama had found funny how the most enthusiastic about letting him get accustomed to said Italian way of life were the other foreign players of the team, rather than the Italians), as they reckoned for the calm and collected Japanese the whole approach Italians had to anything had to result very chaotic and messy, at first sight.

“Thank you... I appreciate. But don’t think I have no experiences about being put into chaotic or messy spots... trust my words when I say no Italian kind of chaos could come unexperienced to me. My teammate in high school... well. That is a whole other type of messy.”

“You mean... the guy who’s your manager now?”

His captain had tried to remember Hinata’s surname, as he was certain that was the guy Kageyama was referring to, but failing to recall it, he had come up with the most notable role he thought he had.  
Kageyama’s face went unusually alive at the question, making his captain palpitate unwillingly at the sight:

“Yeah. Hinata. That guy... is the loudest, most absurd and uncontrolled person ever. There’s nothing about Italy which can come near to the turbulence I have experienced alongside him in my teens. So don’t worry about my way to get used to this beautiful Country and its people. If I have gotten used to Hinata, this is gonna be a piece of cake...”

The Captain tried to guess out of Kageyama’s words and his shimmering eyes what contribution that short manager he had seen in person before the deal of his transferring was completed could have in his new teammate’s development as a player, but like many others times, Kageyama’s face was a sphinx too hard to correctly estimate, especially after so little time spent together.

“Okay then. Anyway, this weekend you are going with us to Lake Como. We want you to exit from your apartment and live a little..”

“But...”

“No but. You are coming. It’s your Captain order. And unless...”

The Captain got stopped in his talking by a vibration in his and everyone else’s phone in the locker room.

“Ops... Communication from the Direction I guess...”

Everyone got out their own phones to look at their message, finding the news about the incoming weekly tasks. Scrolling them down, they found a bolder note which was meant especially for Kageyama:

“This Saturday and Sunday Kageyama will be hosted by the President in his Garda Lake villa, along his manager, Shouyo Hinata, and a fellow Japan National Team recruit who’s coming to ask about how life in our team is.”

“Fuck, Tobio... who’s that you’re calling here as well?”

All of Kageyama’s teammates looked at him with a mixture of curiosity and reproach; okay that he was himself a new recruit, but if he was to bring some other National Team star along from Japan, he had to tell them straight.  
But Kageyama had no idea about who was coming with Hinata.  
A little flash passed through his mind that he had to be a big name though, somebody Hinata would not be in the position to deny, seeing as the coming would be impending during the time of Yamaguchi and Yachi’s wedding.

_Maybe he doesn’t want to actually see them marrying? Maybe he keeps having feelings for Hitoka?_

“So?”

The question from the team was a chorus of curious short questions, and Kageyama seemed lost for a moment in the helter skelter of it.

“I... have no idea, to tell you guys the truth. Hinata didn’t say a word to me about this. I didn’t even know he would be here this weekend...”

Kageyama’s team had already learnt in those little days spent together how the guy would never ever lie. He had in fact no idea about this coming, if he was saying so.

“So it’s not your plot to escape our team bonding time at the lake?”

“No, captain... and... since we are all at the lake...”

“No. You will be at Garda Lake, and we were organizing our weekend at _Como_ Lake... they are not the same place...”

Kageyama looked like he wanted to ask more, but his Captain understood his simpleminded idea before he could speak, and stopped him:

“...and they are not near. Not enough to let you use us as an excuse to leave the meeting the President has clearly set up for you and your manager and whoever is that is coming there as well...”

At that Kageyama looked defeated.  
His teammates tried to sugarcoat a bit the perspective of his weekend, telling him the President Villa was a stunning residency in the beautiful town of Sirmione, one of the most beautiful places in the whole of Italy:

“Even if you go there for business somehow, trust us, the place is worthy and you will most definitely have time enough to appreciate the location. There are Thermal waters, you can see Ancient Roman Ruins... you’ll love it there!”

“O...kay then. Okay.”

“But try to discover who‘s the player whom you’re gonna meet? We are so curious! Call your manager now?”

Kageyama thought that even if it was plain night in Japan, what Hinata had done, not telling him a word about this whole situation, was deserving a harsh call out in the core of the night.

“That dumbass...”

“Eh? Did you say something?”

“No, no I didn’t Captain. And... I would call Hinata but if he’s in Japan it’s night there right now...”

“Oh. Right. It’s true, you can’t wake him up then... okay but as soon as you’ll know more details from him send us a message? This is a major thing for us if another Japanese National Player would join our ranks!”

Kageyama nodded, promising his teammates he would let them know as soon as he would as well. Then he quietly collected all of his things and moved out of the gym facility, to get back home with the public transports. He liked Milan’s green approach to public mobility, which had been implemented he had learnt in the past half decade.  
He also found strangely soothing and relaxing the masses of workers getting in and out of the metro stops: in a diminished degree it was reminding him of his Tokyo times as a college attendee, and he was always feeling warm when realizing how he had progressed in those years in his capacity of moving around towns without getting completely lost.  
He’d be still in need of directions from time to time... but his Tokyo days had definitely helped him a lot in that area.  
Sitting down for a while on his way home on the red Metro, Kageyama tried to wonder who would be coming that weekend.  
Quicker than a ray of light coming and going, the image of Miya Atsumu materialized into his vision, all taken by the guessing game.  
Could it be that...  
But no.  
He wouldn’t be coming from Japan?  
Was Hinata coming from Japan after all?  
Was he already with the other person traveling to reach him?  
In his mind, pieces of past notions glued together, until one only name materialized for him out of his reasoning.

_Sakusa San._

That could be the only possible answer. Even though also to imagine Sakusa traveling along Hinata would request a lot of fantasy and bravery, if he had to be honest with himself.  
Sakusa San had never been fond of Hinata. **NOTE B**  
No matter how many efforts he had put into the besting of his senpai’s perceptions of the shorter guy, Kageyama had never been able to mellow the ace spiker regarding his former teammate.  
To imagine therefore that Sakusa Kyoomi would travel all the way from Japan to Italy along the talkative redhead on his own will was still awkward in all ways.  
But that was also the only option Kageyama considered reputable if he had to bet about who was coming to him that weekend.  
After he had dined, a mail from Hinata confirmed his final and actually only guess as correct.

_“Hello Flying Disaster..._  
Shouyo’s here to make your day better! Guess what? We’ll be seeing each other by the weekend. I told you I would have done something great out of that Sakusa San’s interview didn’t I? Well, don’t thank me too much but I am actually bringing him there in Italy to meet your President. And no, it’s not like I am his manager or anything, I just helped him with my unparalleled PR skills and arranged a personal meeting between him and yer’ boss there. Then the man has insisted so much in having as well you and me dropping by for the weekend in some sort of mega villa on the lake and I couldn’t say no? That would have been very rude? As I said, don’t thank me though. It’s all good business. Sakusa San has told me to not tell you he comes, so try to look surprised when you’re gonna see him ok? You do suck as an actor but please. At least try ok? Don’t answer this, I won’t check mails anyway the whole day! I am very busy and I have also to drop by Yamaguchi to give him my wedding gift... of course I can’t go if I have to be in Italy with you right? It’s a bit sad we cannot be there, we’ll be the only ones missing it, even Tsukishima comes back just for them but ehi... some trains cannot be let passing us by right? See you this weekend, be well and play at your best and don’t kill babies ok?  
Sho.” 

Kageyama looked at the mail like he could see and hear Hinata speaking the whole of its writing. 

_“He cannot even write the word “wedding” down. There’s no doubt he does still feel something for Yachi San...”_

Roaming in his kitchen, Kageyama felt a tightrope on his chest, imagining his best friend suffering for his original love finally lost to one of his best mates. 

_“You dumbass... I always told you you had to stop to fall for her headfirst since Karasuno days... but you have never listened to me once...” **NOTE C**_

Kageyama went up to his bedroom, and from a drawer in his cupboard he took off an album of pictures he had printed in years out of the little number of digital ones he had taken along in his life.  
Turning the pages, he found the picture he wanted to look at: 

“There we were... and I am sure you still look and think of her with that stupid smile and those bristling eyes...” 

Taking the picture out from the protective foil, Kageyama fixed his sight into it: Hitoka in the middle with Hinata by her right, and Yamaguchi by her left, their clothes all wet after an unplanned fall into a fresh spring on a hot summer day when they had ventured behind the “Karasuno Heartbreak Hill” **NOTE 2** and had inadvertently ran over too many moving stepstones.  
He looked to find himself by Hinata’s side, looking at Tsukishima who was trying his best to escape from the picture a kind lady had taken of them under Hinata’s request “to make memories out of this mess”. 

Smiling at the acceptance that day had indeed become a precious memory, he hoped one time soon his best friend would have found a way to fix his broken heart. 

“Love still something just too unreliable to make anyone’s life revolve around it... whatever is that love represents and stands for anyway.” 

Not that he could truthfully grasp the depth or the magnitude of the concept of _love_ , actually. He had never had any wish to be be able to, either.  
But he was feeling sad for his friend who had been betrayed by “whatever love was” for so many years at that point, enough to feel a tightened chest and a sense of nausea coming along, the more he was trying to figure it out the real reason behind Hinata’s ditching of the marriage he had seemed so participating and delighted for until a just few days before. “Oh well... I can’t mold his brain... His choice to have never let go of Hitoka in so many blue moons. Now he has to. If he needs my help, he knows I will do whatever he asks. If he doesn’t ask... it means he wants to fight this on his own. And it’s my duty to accept it.” 

Despite the deep friendship which was between the two of them, Kageyama and Hinata had never really shared their intimate adventures with one another, beside the first time back in their second high school year when Hinata had confessed to him he had fallen for Hitoka from head to toe. **NOTE D**  
They knew they could have done it; but neither of them had often had the impulse to do it.  
Not for fear of being judged or evaluated, because they would have never even thought about anything as petty as that; it was more than their connection was on a beyond level than the fugitive feeling of feeling attracted to the body or mind or heart (or all of that) of another human.  
They had shared for years a kind of passion which implied total trust and total devotion, and if for Kageyama that kind of devotion had never been matched by any feeling, not even from afar, regarding other living beings, for Hinata it had been different, in the sense his diminutive frame had showed him no further growing in his sport career past the time of high school glory, enough to comprehend he had to direct his skill to commit to other lands instead than those of agonistic pursuits, but still he hadn’t found other proper loves to celebrate and cherish and had remained immobilized in a dream he had knew all along he would never materialize for himself.  
So while for Kageyama it had never been important to share with Hinata tales of his quite frequent sexual encounters with people (and especially people also Hinata had known or knew), because in the end all that was still mattering to him was only volleyball, Hinata had never wanted to bother or sound or look pathetic to his best friend by sharing with him how painful it had been, after being forced to realize volleyball could not be his life due to his height, to acknowledge also his only serious love interest had to be forgotten due to her being since forever in love with one of his best mates, either. 

“I wish you could accept she is not the right person for you, dumbass... and I wish you would start to look around yourself for real. There might be many girls who could find your incredible energy and limitless enthusiastic personality very appealing, if you only would stop thinking of somebody who never considered you in _that_ way in the first place...” 

And putting the picture back in its protective transparent cover in the album, Kageyama went to his personal gym to train his upper body, completely focused in his movements and oblivious to anything else around him bar the flexibility of his torso and the number of calories burnt in the effort to sculpt it. To take the best and most accurate care of his body had long been his truest relaxing trick. Since he had discovered the beauty of volley back in his elementary school times, he had understood the impeccable maintaining of the human machine that was his body was one of his most important tasks to fulfill as an athlete.  
He had never considered how the physical regime he had always submitted himself to gladly could be seen from others as an obsession.  
He was always feeling fine when training, so much that he practically didn’t even consider demanding the monstrous schedule he was daily setting up for himself.  
He could claim to perfectly understand any part of his body’s meaning to function and to be a true listener of his own muscles and bones.  
When he had no friends, when he could not approach people nor animals, his own body structure had always been sort of his friend.  
A thing to take a maniacal care of.  
A thing to feel thankful for.  
A thing to love and consider and preserve.  
A thing to fight for with the best rewarding in sight. **NOTE 3**

The subsequent two days passed without notice; Kageyama was having a nice time in Italy and to study the language had surprisingly found him fond and inspired. There was a certain degree of musicality in the way the words sounded in Italian which was soothing and mellow to his ear, and that had made his teacher (a middle aged lady who was younger than she appeared at the eye, full of smart teaching methods and naturally expressive) overjoyed to hear he was feeling pleasure during their lessons, rather than the weight of commitment. 

“Kageyama San, if you find even a little of fun in this we do, you’ll see progresses faster than expected with the learning! I have gotten into Japanese the same way, when I was a student of Bocconi University. I never ever expected it, to find curiosity for a language so foreign... I never even found appealing the anime my generation has grown along with in the time of my childhood! But then, a friend at the University brought me at a seminar of a Japanese scholar during our first year in Bocconi, and instead of falling for his treating about macro-economy and the likes, I found myself captivated by the sound of his mother tongue when he was speaking with his assistant, and realized there and then how I wanted to learn Japanese at any cost!” 

The way his enthusiastic teacher would always try to conquer his heart through examples and metaphors full of notions from his home country was flattering and extremely interesting for Kageyama, and it was also very useful and effective. He had to agree to find fun in learning was the master road for a successful outcome.  
He wanted so much to express this concept to her, that on his Friday lesson he attempted to build a full fledged sentence out in Italian, with a difficult syntax and an even more difficult consecutio temporum to link its parts together. Overlooking the poor result, the teacher smiled at him, and thanked him lively and richly for his effort. 

“Italian is a very difficult idiom, so don’t mind the little mistakes... even Italians do plenty of them! But as long as you try, that’s the point. The goal matters, sure... but it’s the road which you will see yourself spending the most fun and long time within the thing that counts for real!” 

Kageyama smiled back.  
That was true in every scope. It was the same with volleyball. The goal was the road’s ending... but the road to be walked into was still the most precious thing, after all. 

“What will you do in the weekend, Kageyama San? Any plan? Try to tell me this in Italian. Little by little... no need for big words...” 

“I will go to Sirmione. I will go to... Lake...” 

“Garda?” 

“Garda! I will go to Garda Lake. Yes.” 

“Magnificent! It’s a stunning location, be assured to visit the Ancient Roman Ruins... it’s a must!” 

Kageyama thought it would be too difficult to try to explain to her in Italian about the President’s invite and his obligations with Hinata and Sakusa, so he just nodded and replied he would have certainly visited the Ruins, having absolutely no idea about their distance from the Villa or even about the size of Sirmione town itself. Before partying ways with the teacher though, he asked which climate he would find by the Lake. 

“Autumn time is very sweet on the Lake. Weather can change, but as long as you come prepared against wind, you’ll be fine. Enjoy your weekend, see you on Tuesday, Kageyama San.” 

Freshen out by the advices of his teacher, Kageyama that evening prepared a small traveling bag with his personal toiletries and a few clothing items. Thinking he would be part of a meeting with his President, he decided to dress the morning after with a suit, just to be presentable enough in case it would be requested of him to take part in any situation he shall be dressed properly for right off the bat.  
Before sleeping, he checked his messages to find Hinata’s one: 

“About to take off from Narita. See you tomorrow by the Lake.” 

There was no further indication about the conditions of his flight; if he was already with Sakusa, or not... Hinata didn’t even write to him which time they would meet.  
In fact, Kageyama had no idea at what time the driver would pick him up to head to the Villa, neither: at the end of the training session that afternoon, he had just been informed a driver would be waiting for him for the transfert to Sirmione. 

“I will definitely be ready by whatever time I am supposed to be: my morning early routine starts before Sun’s out anyway...” 

The morning after, Kageyama did his training (a thing he’d never skip, not on Saturdays neither on Sundays), and after taking a light breakfast following it, he showered and then prepared himself, waiting for the driver to ring him up briefly after completing his dressing up.  
But as minutes passed, tenth in tenths of them, he started to wonder if all that hadn’t been a giant prank to make fun out of him.  
Fidgeting in his place, he tried to relax, but there was little which resulted relaxing to him and mainly it had to do with physical activities of some sort, which he obviously couldn’t indulge in at that point.  
Looking at his tech watch, he wondered if Hinata and Sakusa had already landed. Hinata was still silent and he didn’t want to look as he was worried about him or their day, so he avoided to try to contact him altogether.  
The time was near to 9.30 am and although he had no idea about the traveling time to Sirmione, it was more and more looking to him that this whole meeting day could well be an organizational disaster waiting to happen.  
Then, at 9.30, his doorbell rang. 

“Mr. Kageyama, I am here. As soon as you’re fine with it, come out and I’ll take you to Sirmione Villa. Take your time. We’re not in hurry.” 

Thirty seconds later, just the time to set his house alarm properly, Kageyama was on the driveway, with his trolley and his trench in hand.  
The driver, the same one who had accompanied him the previous time, looked bewildered in finding him ready to go.  
It was clear he was curious about the timing of his passenger’s completed get up, but his professionalism was forbidding him from any personal and familiar asks to Kageyama about it. 

Once Kageyama got in the car, comfortably seated in the back of a luxury Mercedes, he fell in a complete mutism.  
Even his breathing was silent.  
The driver had no way to initiate any conversation unless prompted by the driven one, so the whole trip went by completely soundless, although none of the atmosphere ever bordered into awkward territory.  
Kageyama kept his eyes on the road, which was going through a mixture of country landscapes, borders of industrial zones, and delicate hills in the proximity of the Lake zone.  
Colors of the fall were clean and vibrant, despite a little fog would cover some place scattering here and there.  
He thought that much similarly to his native Japan, the gaps between inhabited zones were never big in Italy, either: you could easily find bunches of houses pretty much anywhere you would be looking at, without difficulty.  
Just the shapes of the houses were quite different, but if one would be shortsighted enough to miss the small details, there would be ways to mistake the look of Italy with the one of Japan pretty easily. 

“We are exiting the highway now, Mr. Kageyama. In around fifteen minutes you’ll be at the Villa.” 

Shaken from his vision of the outside, Kageyama thanked the driver. Then after a little, he said he was sorry he had been silent during the whole trip. 

“I was trying to listen to the Italian radio you were listening to as well, to see if I could understand some of the speakers words. Unfortunately, they all speak too fast for me to be able to decipher much, yet...” 

The driver smiled. 

“Next time, if you like and are inclined to, you can try to use me as speaking partner to train yourself with Italian.” 

“Really? Wouldn’t I be a bother to you?” 

The driver’s smile increased. 

“Absolutely not! It’d be my pleasure. For real.” 

Kageyama’s eyes glinted, and a small distended line painted itself on his lips, illuminating his face majorly, despite being quite the little curve: 

“Thank you, then. I will most definitely take up on your offer next time.” 

The car had arrived at its destination: a large gate made of stone and intricate metal opened in front of them, making way into a small boulevard walled up by beautiful cypresses on both sides, climbing up a little hill, and surmounted at the end by an elegant building, in the style of Palladio’s typical Villas, which can be found in many northern areas of Italy.  
The building wasn’t enormous, but its refined look appeared amazing enough to leave Kageyama speechless. 

“Welcome here, my dearest boy!” 

The voice of the President, coming off from the main entrance of the structure, sounded all joyous and excited. In a way, that man had something of Hinata in him, Kageyama reckoned. 

“It’s... my pleasure. Thank you for the invite...” 

Replied the setter, bowing with his usual grace. 

“Come on, boy, no need to be formal with me? Come, step inside... my wife and daughter are waiting for you...” 

Wife?  
Daughter?  
Kageyama tried to prevent his trademark frowning to appear, but he failed.  
Nobody had told him the family of the President would be part of the weekend? 

“Ahahah... I see you! Don’t worry, they are just very curious to meet you, but they won’t stay here... they have commitments back in Milan, and they have to move there exchanging places with you in the car. They were here in the past days though. And they waited to leave especially to make your acquaintance properly!” 

Saying that, the President had thought to make it easier to Kageyama to approach his family; contrariwise, to know the reason for the scheduling adjustment of the wife and the daughter of his boss had been the excitation to meet him just caused the socially defective young man to crumble even more under the pressure. 

“Oh. You look strange, my boy... did my surprise cause you stress? Sorry... I didn’t mean to... But now I can’t do anything... they saw you coming... they are already waiting inside, and I can’t tell them anything but you’re here and excited to meet them...” 

“I am!” Said Kageyama with both an eager and embarrassed voice. “I am... it’s just that... I am nothing too great to make important persons such as your wife and daughter wait for me?” 

At that, the President erupted in a genuine, happy laugh. 

“You are a gift... ahahahah! So humble and cute, really! Ahahaha! My wife will love you even more, that’s for sure!” 

Kageyama hated to be called _cute_ , but he tried his best to not let it show, and followed the President inside the villa after waving goodbye to the always kind driver who seemed such a good and polite person to him.  
As soon as he stepped into the building, Kageyama was left even more speechless than he had been catching the external beauty of the residency.  
The roof was high, and the whole space seemed way bigger inside than it looked from the outdoor.  
Stucco typical plaster works and classic Italian paintings were hang up on the walls, and the corridor was heading into an open space surrounded by columns which opened over multiple terraces, overlooking the Lake.  
The open space was furnished as a sort of living room and had many sofas and couches, tables and chairs, plus three designed libraries and a stunning white piano in the middle of it. 

“My daughter is a talented pianist, I’ll tell you this...” whispered the President into Kageyama’s ear, bending the younger man a little to be able to actually reach it “and she will surely insist to show herself and her talent to you, masquerading her vanity with the excuse of greeting you differently. Please, play along. She’s the apple of my eye, and I can’t say no to her...” 

Kageyama nodded.  
He found cute that weakness of his boss regarding his daughter. He had this very paternal aura about himself which reminded him a little of the way his former captain Sawamura used to treat him in Karasuno, back in his first high school year. A firm gentleness in being always there for someone, and a natural skill at guessing everybody’s inmost desires, without letting the beneficiary get the effort behind such dedicated care.  
As they entered the peculiar living space, and the sound of their steps made it known around, the wife and the daughter of the President stood up from where they were seating, to move towards their guest with their best smiles and words. 

“Welcome, Mr Kageyama! It’s a pleasure to have you here and to finally meet you!” 

The President’s wife was a tiny lady with voluminous blonde hair. She had a squared, yet pleasant face and although her lips were too thin to look generally notable, her smile was so bright and full the whole of her face looked actually beautiful when lighted up by the whiteness of her regular teeth.  
Just behind her, a little girl, with stunning green eyes and hair as blonde and voluminous as her mother’s tied in a very high ponytail, creeped a little to look at her guest, and the rose on her cheeks and the trembling in her words explained even to Kageyama that the young girl was obviously crushing hard on him.  
How she could be, considering them two had never met before, was still mysterious to the guy. 

“We... Welcome... here. I am Lisa. And I am very happy to meet you too!” 

At that tender embarrassment, given out by the winsome stuttering of the youngest one in the room, Kageyama melted. Without even thinking about it, or if that would look improper or too bold, he kneeled to reach the hand of Lisa, offering his own to let her come forward from behind her mother’s bust, and with his best Italian speech yet, he naturally said: 

“It’s my pleasure to meet you, Lisa. Thank you for inviting me.” 

Lisa’s eyes widened, and her hand, whose long and neat fingers were a major component of her talent with piano, reached out to touch the setter’s one, finding the swift moment of the connection immensely rewarding, and making her shudder: 

“You... speak Italian?” 

Kageyama smiled, and the girl’s cheeks became a full on red flag: but she didn’t lower her eyes, and she kept waiting for the young man’s answer without losing touch: 

“Not yet. But I will learn it well so that one day we can talk a bit longer, okay?” 

Lisa nodded, and her happiness colored her face with the most enchanting twinkle. She was a very nice looking girl, and appeared to have a taller frame than her mother. Kageyama stood up, and realizing he had yet to greet the mother he bent, excusing himself for having immediately addressed her daughter, instead than replying to her kind salutation. 

“Don’t be sorry! You are even more adorable than I thought you were... Feel yourself at home here, and let us invite you more! If Lisa couldn’t wait to meet you today, I guess after your amazing gesture just now she will buy even more posters of you to hang up in her room!” 

Kageyama wasn’t sure how to answer to that. Kageyama was not even understanding how he had just been informed that the crush of his boss’ daughter towards him was rooted into her from quite a time; and about getting another open invitation at coming more often to the Villa, he also had no idea on how to feel about.  
In his head, those kind of invites should have been extended to the whole team. He wasn’t anything different than the rest of it. But he realized that wasn’t the moment to say it. He would have politely smiled, and then one day he would have addressed this idea of his properly to the President. 

“I’ll be glad to replicate the pleasure of spending time around here any time you will find it pleasant, too. Again, thank you for having me!” 

The President gave his family a content look, then he invited Lisa to sit at the piano, in case she wanted, because they had soon to be heading to Milan if they wanted to be there in time for her musical essay at the Academy. 

“And then in around 40 minutes our other guests will be here, so we need to set up the space comfortably for them too, okay honey? Come on, darling... sit there and play what you said you wanted to?” 

Lisa started to seem overwhelmed by her own expectations, and glancing at her father, she seemed to look out for comfort and support. 

“Are you scared? Are you sweetie? Don’t be, Kageyama here will certainly love what you’re gonna play. Do it like you always do when playing for us. Do it to have fun. Do it to enjoy yourself and to share that joy and spread it around. Don’t be scared. To share joy is always a gift, remember... and no one would ever turn a gift down.” 

Although that all had been spoken in Italian, Kageyama thought he had understood most of the speech. And into his own heart he had agreed that the best way to do anything would be to have fun first in doing it. 

Reassured by her father, Lisa moved to the piano. She inhaled plenty, then looked at his parents, then at Kageyama, blushing again a little, and finally she closed eyes, and began to press the keys.  
A melodious, thrilling and precise sonata overflow from her fingers to the ears of the attendees.  
She was undoubtedly talented, and Kageyama felt like a refreshing breeze was passing through his hair, making his skin tickle and feel alive.  
A tiny memory surfaced of when he had listened first Tsukishima play piano in front of him as well, and the image of his long fingers substituted those of Lisa’s for an instant; then it all faded out, and the real image before his eyes came back in full effect.  
The more Lisa was playing her music, the more he was feeling gleeful and at ease, in that space which was losing the connotation of oddity for each new note Lisa would gift him with.  
When the young girl had ended her performance, a natural applause escaped from Kageyama’s hands, and from the look of admiration in his eyes, it was clear there was nothing fake about it. 

“You have an amazing talent, Lisa. I wish you to nurture it, and treasure it and be happy you have it all your life.” 

Which was what he had learnt to feel about his own talent, too, after years of a conflicted sense of refusal to be proud about certain aspects of it.  
Following a round of other complimentary conversations, and as soon as one of the maid of the house had informed the two ladies their luggage and belongings had already been stored into the car, The President and Kageyama remained alone in the lounge area, at first without speaking further past the departure of the rest of the President’s family. 

Being Kageyama... _Kageyama,_ he would not speak first in such situations where he would not be aware of his role or position or meaning into that day which was still mostly an extravagant deployment to him.  
Maybe once Hinata would be there, that sense of singularity would disappear out. 

“Your friends are coming in ten minutes, I got a message right now from my assistant who’s driving them here...” opened up the older man “...and even though I have no idea why the most powerful spiker of Japan has suddenly decided to check up on our team, I hope you can make him see the goodness of my plan, in case he’s evaluating a transfer in Italy.” 

Kageyama got the message loud and clear. 

“I will certainly tell Sakusa San about my wonderful experience here so far. But to be sincere, I am very surprised he has agreed in coming here, even if it’s just an exploration. Sakusa San... loves our Country the most. He breathes Japan. He’s not the type who would be happy anywhere but in our Home Country. This at least... is what I have always thought about him. But maybe... Maybe I have been wrong all along?” 

The President smiled.  
A different kind of smile.  
A serious kind of it. 

“Your manager told me the same. But whatever is that made him come to us... let’s try to make it work for our great goal. I am not here to tell you to co-opt him or anything. I just hope that if there’s something you truly find captivating here, you won’t miss the chance to make him aware of it, too. I know you are a respectful person, and I know you never speak unless you find it necessary. This is why I am telling you this: tell your teammate all that you feel about here and about us, because I think it may be necessary for you to, in order to maximize the tiny chance we might get to have also Sakusa Kyoomi playing in our team.” 

Kageyama nodded, and then assured his boss he would not fail him. 

Right that moment, Hinata and Sakusa went announced by the butler. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **NOTE 1,2,3:** All real canon notations either from manga and/or anime.
> 
> **NOTE A,B,C,D:** Events occurred in other installments of this series I am writing.
> 
> **"Dangerously" a song by Charlie Puth** I was listening to radio when I was scratching this chapter and this song played. I IMMEDIATELY thought it was working awesomely with it so... there you go ;)
> 
> **The music which goes with this new original song &lyric I created is this one: **  
> 
> 
> [Do You Remember Me?](https://vimeo.com/277932938) from [Benten_Haruki](https://vimeo.com/user75516160) on [Vimeo](https://vimeo.com).
> 
> **If there’s one thing Japanese people love, it’s baths**. You’ll notice that at most Japanese houses, the bath is separate from the shower, as people look forward to relaxing in hot water at the end of the day and soothing their stresses accumulated in everyday life. There’s even a Japanese phrase, **hadaka no tsukiai (literally “naked relationship”)** , that refers to how interpersonal bonds are strengthened by bathing together, hiding nothing from each other. The first instances of people bathing in onsen date back to the 7th century, and it has become the prime form of leisure for Japanese people since. However, an onsen is just not any regular bath – bathing in an onsen has many health benefits, due to its many minerals. Many onsen (according to legend) were discovered when people saw wounded animals bathing in them to heal themselves, while samurai would use onsen to treat their battle scars. One of the most volcanically active countries in the world, there are thousands of onsen all over Japan, though the majority are found in the countryside. It’s not a stretch to say that no two onsen are the same, as each has its own unique mineral composition, charms, and specialities. On maps, onsen are usually marked with the kanji for **hot water 湯 (yu), the hiragana ゆ, or the symbol ♨** , while many are also annexed to Japanese ryokans and hotels. 
> 
> **Public Transport System in Milan** Since this installment is written in a short term future, I am writing about the things that my hometown is CURRENTLY implementing in its strategy for a free and green mobility. Crossing fingers all goes well!!!
> 
> **The Italian fascination with Japan and the Anime Culture** As soon as commercial television started in Italy, and even before that on the National Rai screening, Anime from Japan were imported and dubbed to constitute the shows which got enjoyed the most by the little kids in the 70's and the 80s, way before any Simpsons appeared and right along with the historical Hanna &Barbera cartoons and the classic Disney's ones. So have my parents explained to me. Hence, the Jap Culture mirrored by the pop culture of Japan Anime has always been a must for Italian kids since MULTIPLE generations. I wanted to homage with the creation of this "teacher" Kageyama has in Italy my Aunt, who's an Anime freak and who has passed to me the bug I guess ;)


	6. When All Wires Garble Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Ivy Flower Meaning**
> 
>  
> 
> Ivy, being an evergreen plant, represents eternity, fidelity, and strong affectionate attachment, such as wedded love and friendship. The ivy plant is also a strong plant which can grow in the hardest environment. 
> 
> Another association of Ivy as an evergreen, is perennial life and immortality.  
> It also may represent dependence and attachment, which can be seen in the way it climbs trees and buildings to get sunlight. 
> 
> The ivy leaf is also phallic, depicting the male trinity, but it can also be a female symbol denoting a force in need of protection. Conversely, however, its malevolent, poison feature can cause it to be seen often as ingratitude.

At the butler’s announcement, Kageyama’s face lit up.  
The President looked at the sudden clarification of his protégée’s facial features and he thinly smiled, reckoning affection in the younger’s loosened appearance.

“Mr. Hinata and Mr. Sakusa are waiting for you in the Reception Room. May I announce to them you’re joining soon, Master?”

“No. There’s no need. Bring them here, dear.”

Without a single flinch in his demeanor the butler moved backwards, as gently and as silently as he had come, and in the time the two were alone once again, the President nodded in excitement and told Kageyama the meeting was meant to be a friendly and familiar gathering.

“There’s no need to be just professional, when friends are involved, don’t you think?”

Kageyama nodded himself. He didn’t think he had an opinion to put out. Whatever the President was inclined to act like, he thought he was in no position to assert or deny him. He had never been one to speak about the meaning friendship held in his life unless during very singular occasions and he didn’t feel like that had to be one of those. 

“Always so composed, Kageyama kun...”

Still, Kageyama wasn’t ready to change his most common way to carry himself for anyone, even though he was about to meet the only person in the world he had never been able to act composed towards.

“Master, your valuable guests are here...”

As the butler made way aside to introduce Sakusa and Hinata, and their sight appeared in front of Kageyama, the setter, although trying to keep a relaxed stance, visibly shook.  
A sort of smile colored his bottom face, and he tried to move forward, paying attention to not bring himself ahead of his President, but nonetheless stepping out of his former place.  
Of course all of his efforts got wasted because Hinata simply stormed inside the room, leaping on to shake vigorously his important host’s hand, and without breaks, literally jumping to tighten Kageyama in a choking kind of embrace.

“Ahhhh!!!! You were ready to do this as well, innit? But as usual I am faster than you! Ah-ah!!!”

Trying to escape one of the most embarrassing moments of his adult life, Kageyama attempted to wriggle out of his best friend’s grip, all red colored and oblivious to the fact that he, without noticing, had started to sprout a not very variated series of insults to Hinata, all in Japanese, like he had been brought back instantly in their former Karasuno gymnasium.  
The other two tried to not look too much at the two quarreling but after realizing without some intervention, they would have kept the sketch running for too long, they both cleared their throats, to give out a signal no one would have dared to overlook.  
By then, the color on Kageyama’s face had become a brilliant shade of healthy blood red.

Hinata, giggling and smoothing his suit - which Kageyama had tried to grasp and wrinkle to allow himself out of the embrace - without signs of amends and with his brightest smile turning to the President justified his exploit by telling that was their mutual way to keep their friendship alive and kicking.  
Then, sensing a proper kick was coming from behind if he would stay still too near to Kageyama, he stepped back to rejoin Sakusa, who had an expression in between revulsion and disconcert.  
Kageyama finally looked in his boss’ direction, expecting back a sight of disappointment and reproach, while swearing inside himself he would just kill Hinata after the meeting, but he was shocked to see on the other’s face a full and delighted smile, and he got even more flabbergasted when Hinata was taken near by the President like he was one of his nephews or something.

“Your manager is the funniest guy on the planet, Kageyama kun! I just can’t blame him for anything... he’s so lively and exuberant he brings joy to any room!”

“I... well... I am...so... sorry...”

An explosive and sincere laugh erupted from the President:

“Sorry? And for what, my dear boy? There’s nothing to be sorry for... ahahahah!”

Kageyama decided it was wasted breath to try to apologize, and as the atmosphere settled on the eccentric rule, he directed his eyes to Sakusa, who was standing as beautiful and unapproachable as ever, and he could tell he was judging every move from Hinata, but also from his boss.  
And if what Sakusa was doing in his mind regarding it all was a kind of test, it most definitely wasn’t one the President was going to pass easily.

“Kyoomi... San...”

Kageyama had reached Sakusa’s side.

“You are trying to get on my good side and making me forget what I have just seen, Tobio?”

Kageyama’s cheeks colored a bit again.  
Indeed he was. Otherwise he would have probably blurted out his favorite ace’s surname, instead of his name, as usual.

“Was I successful in that?”

“No. But let’s say I can start it all over, if this pleases you.”

“It’d be very much appreciated. Despite the current look of this, I can assure you our President is the most caring and smart person ever. He truly loves volley. He has... a vision. A vision which feels fine to me, a vision which is similar to my own one. And if it is similar to mine, then you know...”

“... looks like it’d be a match for my own one, too.”

“Yes.”

A brief glance between the ace and the setter and Sakusa looked ready to give the incoming meeting an actual chance.

“Can I guide you to him?”

“I haven’t been blinded by Italy’s sun yet...”

“But it’s something I’d like very much to do.”

Sakusa relaxed his shoulders, and his voice got deeper. A beautiful tone of warmth and dusk.

“Then I’ll let you do it.”

Kageyama moved along Sakusa to join his President and Hinata, who were talking in front of the bow window.  
The four interacted for a while, this time mostly between the President and Sakusa, with the occasional intervention of Kageyama who would explain his points of view to reinforce his boss’ attempt at luring the powerful ace of Japan National Team into well disposition towards their team. Every now and again, seeing him flinching aside, Kageyama would glare at Hinata to stop him from inserting himself into the conversation, thing which would have irritated Sakusa, and the short manager would look almost constipated by his efforts in not breaking his silent commitment.

“See, Mr. Sakusa... what I long the most for is to make volleyball a star among sports in Italy. It is already very well loved. It is certainly very much practiced. We have a great League, and alternatively, our National Teams, the male one and the female one, do great performances in all major competitions, as you certainly must know through your impeccable international pedigree. But this is just a stage. What I’d like to obtain through my volley team, is to be a lighthouse for entire new generations of kids. I want them to get sucked into volley, I want them to strive to be part of the volley movement, through the passion this team will inspire them with. To reach this goal, it’s beyond important to have players in my team capable to make kids dream. People with an aura of... divinity to them. People they can look at and get shivers from. That’s why I moved mountains to bring here **our beautiful shadow mountain** and that’s why at the perspective of meeting you I got overwhelmed by joy. Because you, like my dear boy here, are the kind of magical player I long to have to fulfill my dream and my project. Please... even in a corner of your mind... please take my offer into consideration. I would do anything, anything for pairing you and Kageyama on court in my team.”

Sakusa inhaled soundly, a rare gesture from him, who was wary of the quality of the air he would breathe to such an extent he would always avoid to take more than what was necessary to survive unless he’d be in his own places he had gotten accustomed to be in. The bright light of the day which was invading the bow window space was gifting his skin tone with a luminescence which was making it look like porcelain and his hair, as black as Kageyama’s, would by contrast make it look even more precious and ethereal.  
After breathing in, Sakusa turned his dark eyes into the President’s ones and speaking a fluent, accent-devoid Italian, he replied he would think fairly of the proposal, and just because of that, he would not be able to give any answer for a while.  
Hinata jerked Kageyama’s arm a little and then whispered to him if he had acknowledged how Sakusa could speak in Italian.  
He actually meant if he had understood himself some of what the ace had replied to his President.

“I had no idea. And no, I don’t think I have properly understood what he has said...”

Hinata scrunched his face at his former setter.

“What are you taking your Italian lessons for if you can’t even translate a single sentence yet?”

Kageyama counted to twenty to avoid to strangle Hinata, and just knitted his eyebrows to him, a clear code which was like ordering him to shut up.

“You speak a wonderful Italian, Sakusa San. May I take this as a sign you are indeed thinking about moving over here?”

“I have multiple interests, and it happens that Italian language is one of them. I wouldn’t read in this anything more than the fact I am in good company in my Country regarding this. Many, many of us in Japan are fond of your language and of your history. But, that goes without saying, sure I wouldn’t feel stranded here if I would ultimately take up on your generous offer. But as I said... I need time to ponder.”

“And time is what you’ll get, then. I am an optimistic person and I consider already an honor the fact of having you here flesh and bones. So take all the time you need. My offer has no expiration date. I can send everything to your manager whenever you like me to.”

Sakusa gave another deep look at the President, then faced the outside scenery from the window. The delicate grace of the olive trees descending from the hill to the waters was capturing him like a mermaid’s chant.

“I don’t use a manager. I deal with everything by myself.”

“Oh. That’s very unusual. But also... very encouraging.”

“Encouraging?”

“Yes. I mean that. I am a man who trusts people. I am someone who wants to establish a direct connection with those I work with. Generally, I am not fond of the managerial side I get so frequent in touch with in my job. I’d rather just talk with those I am truly interested in. Very rarely I get in synchronicity with managers, because they are not visionaries. They are accountants...”

Sakusa replied while keeping his eyes on the landscapes outside the villa:

“I like this way to think. I also am of the same breed, I guess.”

The President smiled, unseen by Sakusa who was keeping watching outside.

“So far, I can say the only manager I have felt in good mood with has been... him.”

Sakusa didn’t need to turn to understand the President was speaking fondly of Hinata. His shoulder tensed. He really could not understand what was so captivating about that little man.  
He never had been able to guess, or relate to that sympathy. 

“Good thing then he is Tobio’s manager. I guess I can live with the fact he has found a decently useful role for himself that way.”

And by saying that Sakusa moved from the bow window to join back Kageyama, who had been sitting on one of the sofas in front of Hinata since they had started to speak Italian with the President.

“That man really dislikes Hinata kun... mmmh. I wonder why...”

Moving as well towards the sofas, the President asked for the other guests’ forgiveness for having used a language not all the four were accustomed with.  
Feeling he was object of the concern of the man, Hinata replied that had not been a problem at all.

“I like the sound of Italian language! I wish I could learn it as well, but it’s very difficult and I am not very good with foreign grammars... But in Japan, a lot of people get to learn it. And I am sure all of them are at least faster than Kageyama kun!”

Kageyama felt the urge of strangling Hinata coming back in force, but as his boss erupted again in a very heartfelt laugh, he had to suppress the intention.

“Dumbass...”

Sakusa, who had sat near to him, pierced his eyes on the side of Kageyama’s face. As it would normally happen, Kageyama _felt_ the gazing without looking, and turned his head to meet his ace’s.

“I wonder, Kyoomi San... how could you travel along him? I bet he has been like this all the time and you...”

“He has. At the start of it. Then either he felt my complete uncooperativeness at acting like a three years old brat, or he went fatigued by talking without thinking, and he allowed me a good silence after a while. All considered, traveling with him has been tolerable enough, once he has stopped with his will of having a conversation with me.”

Kageyama looked at Sakusa with eyes full of comprehension. For a longtime, at the start of his Karasuno days, he had felt exactly the same regarding Hinata. Then everything had changed, but a part of him would forever understand Sakusa’s opinion no matter what. The rest of him, though...

“Hinata is the reason I can focus about volley without any care about the rest, Kyoomi San.”

Sakusa nodded.

“I know. You trust him like you’d trust your own self. And that’s the only reason for which I can stand him, even though I actually can’t.”

Kageyama faintly giggled.

“Thank you. It means a lot to me.”

Before Sakusa could speak again, Hinata came, enthusiastically announcing he was about to venture with the President in his family’s ancient winery near the villa property.

“You want to join us, guys?”

Kageyama didn’t know what to reply his boss with. On one side, he thought to visit an ancient winery would have been nice, but on the other side, the thought of having to part somehow Hinata and Sakusa for hours was making him shivering coldly.

“Actually, Mr. President... don’t judge this as lack of respect for your magnificent hosting but... I’d like very much to visit Catullo’s Ruins.”

The President stunned.

“You really do know a lot about history as Kageyama kun said to me, Sakusa kun. Can I call you that?”

A bit coldly, Sakusa accepted to be called with the suffix by the older man. Anything, to witness History in person.

“Of course, Mr. President. So... sorry if we won’t join you at the winery, but Tobio and I will go sightseeing Catullo’s Ruins instead. It’s something I cannot miss, being here in Sirmione. As soon as I learnt we’d meet over here, the images of those powerful stones have been etched into my brain...”

The President offered the two men his driver, but Sakusa declined. He was in need of moving and take a walk towards the Ruins would have helped his body losing the constriction from the long flight. Kageyama also stated he was in need to move a bit as well. Then looking at his feet, and realizing the way he was dressed, he sighed. The President acknowledged his frustration, and immediately acted after it, suggesting his guests the best way to enjoy Sirmione for them all would be ditching the formal suits in favor of a more casual outfitting.

“Your guest rooms have been prepared. They are up on the second floor, the tree rooms on the left side of the corridor. The first one is for Kageyama kun, the second is for Mr. Hinata, and the third is for Mr. Sakusa. Feel free in this house, and feel at home as well. I’ll go changing myself too, so that you won’t feel uneasiness in your attires. And if Kageyama and Sakusa prefer walking rather than a car, then Hinata kun, it’s your turn to enjoy my favorite driver’s ability. Let’s find ourselves outside when we’re ready. And let’s have a great day here in Sirmione.”

When after twenty minutes Kageyama came back on the base floor, undecided if waiting in the corridor hall for someone else to join, or step out already, he heard the unmistakable laugh of Hinata from outside and peeked at one of the large windows which were aside the front door to catch the sight of his best friend overexcitedly talking to his President, like indeed the two had been knowning each other for years. 

_The way you are able to make anyone feel fine while you scream and cheer about the most inane things... dumbass... it’s... wonderful..._

“Oh, am I the last one then?”

The deep voice behind him made Kageyama snap out of his thoughts, and turning head, he found Sakusa dressed the same way as he was: a sport uniform of black-ish nuance, of a different technical sponsor.

“Sa... Kyoomi San...”

Sakusa, behind the mask he had put on, clearly giggled. At the sound, Kageyama relaxed.

“I appreciated your attempt at calling me by name, Tobio... you can call me how it comes the most natural to you, from now on...”

Kageyama tilted a bit his head. Sakusa’s voice had no menacing quality as he had said that.

“Why are you surprised? In fact, I really like the way my Surname sounds in your voice. And it doesn’t matter the way you address me, since the only thing which counts is the fact you speak with me.”

Kageyama smiled.  
There was a way to speak between the two of them which had always felt really safe to him. For how much the both of them looked intimidating and inaccessible to the rest of the world, fact was that they considered one another extremely easy to deal with. Their standoffish-ness was a bad way others had to judge their sincerity and their otherwise reserved nature maybe, but it was just a wrong code. Their mutual way to interact with one another had always felt extremely natural to the two men, gifting their relationship with a kind of understanding which was very deep and precious to each one of them.

“Do you know the way to the Ruins, Sakusa San?”

“Don’t you expect me to?”

“Oh, I am sure you could give indications to the majority of the residents of this small town regarding them, actually.”

Sakusa chuckled properly behind the mask, and his eyes squeezed in a happy, relaxed cut; nodding charmingly with his soft black curls moving back and forth, he took initiative and stepped out, with Kageyama trailing behind, to reach the extremity of Sirmione town, a little peninsula stretching into Garda Lake waters, where the Grottoes of Catullus dominated the scenery since more than 2000 years.

“The Museum is very nice, but before seeing it, I’d rather visit the ruins of the villa, before too many visitors fill the place...”

“Ok. We’ll do as you think it’s better, Sakusa San...”

Sakusa stopped in his tracks, and Kageyama almost collided with him. Then he turned head and his black deep eyes scanned the calm face of the setter, which had no idea about the thoughts the spiker was having in that moment.

“Is there... anything wrong?”

“No. No, Tobio, it’s all fine. I was just thinking how generally that is my line...”

Kageyama realized how on court, he was the one deciding the way games would play. And as they were immersed in a construction which was standing up despite centuries, as humbling and majestic as ever, for the very first time he connected the dots and understood that probably no other man was trusted by Sakusa Kyoomi the way he was. It felt strange to him how for many years the two had played along that well, without that acknowledgement crossing properly his mind.

“Tobio?”

“Sorry... I... I just realized something I never had. Maybe it’s this place. This place which feels like belonging to you, Sakusa San, even though it is not Japanese...”

Sakusa’s eyes lit up. A wave of shine in his dark night irises, and a little trembling showed in his voice for a second, while he waved to open in front of Kageyama, like a gift, the august display of the ruins they were into.

“You make me happy saying this, because I have a great admiration for the Ancient Romans and their immortal vestiges. I have always felt a strong connection with their saga, and I have actually always felt a bond exists between Italy and Japan. We sure have different inclinations but... we are both Nations devoted to beauty. Italians and Japanese people grow up while tasting elegance, proportions, history all around them. And even when we don’t realize it, both us and Italians have far more refined tastes than other people. It’s because beauty is offered in front of us since Centuries, in the form of art, in the form of Nature, in the form of value. And so... even if Italians are way more chaotic than we are, but also very creative and passionate about what define their Country, the same happens for us in Japan. And that’s why I think many Japanese have respect for Italy, despite some clear flaws in the way Italians carry themselves sometime... it’s because we do reckon a similarity between ourselves and them, something which may be hard to call with a name, but which has passed so many tests of time, that we _feel_ it makes our essence of the same type, and therefore it makes our Countries share a lovingly kind of correspondence.”

Kageyama was looking at Sakusa with open wide eyes.  
Anytime the spiker would get into what he was deeming reputable and notable, he would speak like possessed by the demon of the eloquence, furious and gorgeous with his whole body exuding power.  
Just like when he was performing his attacks on a court, he would become inimitable and glorious, and exactly like it would happen on court, Kageyama would feel attracted and fascinated by him, drowning into his aura willingly and excitedly.

“You... you know so many things, Sakusa San. I wonder how a single brain can retain all of the things you know without making not even a single one escape...”

Sakusa looked at Kageyama and then, without warning, in the middle of the beautiful and tall ruins just at the edge of the peninsula, with the sound of waves crashing down at the stony beach below them, he impromptus asked why Kageyama had decided to fly away to Italy.

“You didn’t even tell me a word in our latest meeting during the National Team Tournament. We spent ten days in the same room, and you didn’t think I was in the position to know you wouldn’t play in Japan for the next three years...”

Kageyama lowered his eyes a bit.  
He had thought about telling Sakusa.  
But then Oikawa had messaged him to be the last one at the doctor check-up and his brain had pinned just that last info, making the rest vanish like vapor into air.

“I... I wanted to tell you. But then the occasion never came...”

Sakusa approached Kageyama more, their faces split by no more than a few centimeters, in that beautiful Fall day which was making the red bricks of the ruins glimmer and bristle around them:

“Occasion? You don’t need occasions to speak with me. I thought we were well past that stage, after so many years...”

Kageyama sighed.  
Sakusa was right.

“And in fact we don’t. But I knew you wouldn’t have liked my choice...”

Sakusa rolled a bit his eyes.

“And I don’t. But I liked even less how I had to learn about it by Motoya. Actually... I had to learn it by Atsumu. Inconceivable.”

At Atsumu’s name mention, Kageyama’s eyes lowered even further. It didn’t go unnoticed by the spiker, who kept talking in a more mellowed tone.

“I guess Atsumu asked you something, and you replied at his question. Am I far from the truth?”

Kageyama nodded. Atsumu had asked him about his transfer during their last dinner at the National Team gathering, for a voice he had heard from their coaching staff; he had just been back from Tooru’s encounter in his studio and he hadn’t been lucid enough to play coy about the incoming destination of his career with his former lover. Atsumu had fallen in silence after the reveal but Kageyama had been able to see in his eyes that he was convinced that choice had to be determined somewhere between the younger setter’s brain and whatever was that he had in place of an heart, as Miya had been used to call his cardiac muscle “Valknut”, or “Hrungnir’s Twin”.

“So he must be happy... in Italy, you’re nearer to him than you were back in Japan?”

“We are not in our best terms lately... I mean... I have no problems whatsoever but Atsumu... he has quite a number of them regarding me instead.”

“I know. Motoya tells me he is very strange these days. Maybe you should call him and clarify...”

Kageyama shrugged. 

“I can’t tell him what he wants to hear from me... so I don’t think a call would solve anything at this point.”

“And what about next time we will be all together playing?”

Kageyama lifted his head, looking up in the bright sky.

“That won’t be a problem at all. If there’s something I can trust Atsumu with, is that his passion for volley is sincere. His passion for volley is like mine and yours.”

“And that’s the sole reason for which I can stand him breathing in my same room, after all.”

Kageyama laughed a bit, relaxing newly.

“You _barely_ allow him to breath, though...”

Sakusa agreed. He was glad the atmospehere was coming back to a lighter tone.

“It’s enough. Just enough to let him play well... and that’s it. I do all only because he’s a player we can’t afford to lose.”

Kageyama smiled.  
Indeed, Atsumu was of a capital importance in their National Team. Their combined toss scheme was still a powerful weapon for a team which was lacking in height compared to other Nations, but which was compensating through brilliantly creative schemes and unexpected combinations and with a kind of athleticism previously unseen on volley courts. **NOTE A**

“Anyway, I shouldn’t judge you for keeping me in the dark about your transfer...”

“What do you mean, Sakusa San?”

Sakusa was acting unusually hesitantly. A more than rare occurrence for somebody as analytical and sharply tongued as he was.

“Well... I actually flew here without telling anyone back in Japan...”

Kageyama froze in place.

“What? You mean you didn’t even tell...”

“I didn’t even tell Wakatoshi, no. And since my phone is off since I met Hinata at the airport, by now he has probably called up Investigative Policy or something to find me...”

Kageyama tried to not think of all the chaos which would ensue at their next National Team outlet. But even though he had never been offered his favorite court partner anything but total acceptance and comprehension during their years as a volleyball pair, it was making his own self spin to guess what had been so powerful to push Kyoomi Sakusa, the biggest Japan lover he had ever encountered, and one of the people who hated the most flying from Country to Country in the whole Northern Hemisphere to reach him in Italy.  
It couldn’t be just his will to check on him, or to visits Catullus’ Grottoes.

“But... why?”

Sakusa took a look at the sky himself, then stepped a bit away from Kageyama. Slow steps in between the ancient stones on the ground and the fluffy grass aside them.  
It was truly a beautiful Fall day, that one.  
He was feeling the staticity of the younger man behind him; he could feel all of him behind, and somehow picture perfectly his face full of atonement and concern.  
Indeed he could.

“I... I just missed you. I did miss you a lot, and you know that if I don’t feel quiet and safe... I can’t play at my best.”

Kageyama stepped forward; Sakusa was still giving him his back, and years of perfect balance between them, years where the setter had been always able to please the peculiar spiker just by being completely honest with him, and completely unfiltered, and when he had always been able to take Sakusa just like he was, without judging anything of him beside his extraordinary talent on court, were telling him he had to wait a bit more before the other could face him properly.

“Motoya is also abroad, playing with Atsumu and Wakatoshi and I are tight, yes, we are friendly but we also are quite similar in our way to pass under silence everything unless somebody forces us to react...”

Kageyama was still behind Sakusa, but just barely.  
He could see the way the broad back of the slightly taller man would mount and descend while speaking, like any word would be in need of being lifted forcibly out of the lips, from the depths of Sakusa’s lungs.

“... and trust me when I say if I’d ever guessed that first day when we met that a little arrogant boy who dared to call me average to my face would actually become the only one I would feel in perfect tuning with, no matter if he can be as silent as me, probably I would have disowned my own self. But it did happen. And now that you’re far away... things never please me as much anymore.”

Kageyama had closed in the distance between his and Sakusa’s bodies.

“Sakusa San... I am not that far away. Not like we can’t talk. Not like we can’t stay silent together. I have a super tech device, something which you can have too, and it can make an hologram of the holder appear in front of another possessor of the same device, and I couldn’t even believe when I saw it, and I know it’s not that same than being together in the same place but... it feels like you can have a real conversation, a real _physical_ one when you call somebody with that. It works. And...”

The empathy in Kageyama’s words of pledge touched Sakusa’s intimacy; even not looking at the younger man, he could trace the way his eyes, lips and head were moving while saying all of that he was telling him. Sakusa closed his eyes, breathing in the air of Italy and that Sirmione flavor which had preserved for dozens of centuries the memories of Ancient Romans, and then, turning to him, with the most stoic, yet most adoring voice he asked Kageyama to come near enough to touch whatever part of him.  
Without any discomposure, even though what Sakusa had just asked was nothing short than a miracle considering his tendencies, Kageyama carefully removed his mask from his face, gently moving it down Sakusa’s long and strong neck, and with eyes full of care, and with motions full of softness, he passed his long fingers from the mask, to the back of Sakusa’s neck, and from there, as slowly as possible to not shock the touch wary man, he began to caress his wavy hair, voluminous and fluffy, until both his hands ended velvetly patting the spiker’s head.  
As the gesture was making their bodies engulfing a bit more and more together, Kageyama could feel a trembling from the other man’s skin, even from under his clothes. For a moment he feared Sakusa’s habit at despising human contact would break their connection, but he knew a way to prevent that from happening, and whispered to Sakusa’s ears to think of that embrace like one of those they were in fact able to share on court.  
At that, Sakusa’s body silkened up and he got fully taken into Kageyama’s arms.  
If people around the Ruins had been able to catch the fugitive embrace between the two men, no one ever came to know.

“I don’t think that I could ever play for months or even less for years far away from Japan, Tobio...”

Still embracing him, Kageyama replied he thought about that and that he was of the same idea.

“But if I were ever to play in some other place... probably... well certainly... I think I could attempt to do it only here, only in Italy, as you’ve done...”

“Because here it is as pretty as in our Country, Sakusa San?”

Yielding a little, Sakusa contested that no place could be as pretty as Japan, but then he conceded Italy was the place with the highest rate of beauty, after Japan.

“So you’ll refuse my President’s offer, I guess...”

Sakusa didn’t answer. He sure would. But in a tiny space into his brain, a voice was trying to convince him he could have tried the impossible, in hope to be newly by his favorite partner’s side. A lost hope. As the whole of his body was rejecting the idea to leave Japan for good.

“Don’t tell him yet. He has been very kind and generous with me. I’ll try to delay my answer enough to not shatter his vision to pieces.”

Kageyama tightened a little bit his arms around the lower back of Sakusa. He was understanding his President. He had no doubt his spiker would have understood the man.

“Sakusa San, by being here, I can get better. And I can make my volley get better. So... have confidence in my dream once more, and I promise you next time we won’t step out of that Olympic Court with low heads anymore.”

Sakusa nodded, and quietly detached from the embrace.  
His face was red and flustered, but his eyes were still indomitable and deep, with no traces of turmoil behind them.

“I’ll work hard as well from my side of the World then. And I will look forward to all of our next chances to be roommates again.”

Feeling happy in the way the day had been progressed, the two men completed their wandering around the Grottoes Park, and after a visit at the annexed Museum, after munching on a couple of toasts in a nearby café they went back to their host’s villa by taking the Park of Sirmione, full of residents and tourists.

“Sakusa San... do you want to walk in a less crowded place?”

“I’d like to, but you’ll forgive me when I say I wouldn’t put our route in your care... although your sense of direction has gotten better, it has not gotten better enough for me to completely confide in it...”

“But...”

“There there... we are almost done with the Park. From now on, we can take this shortcut and by passing from the higher part of the town, we shall come back to the villa without meeting too many strangers on the way.”

“You’ve memorized the entire map of Sirmione?”

“I did.”

Kageyama smiled, and throttled faster aside Sakusa. His ace was indeed something extraordinary.

“You seem happy, Tobio...”

Facing Sakusa with an open smile, Kageyama said:

“I always am happy when we are together. Nothing’s strange about my mood. Thank you for being with me , Sakusa San. It still feel a dream to share my life and path with you. No matter where we are... we are still on the same path anywhere we go.”

Sakusa felt his blood rush to his checks, and he adjusted a bit his mask to conceal the fact.  
To think a person he had wanted to destroy the first time he had crossed him would be able to make him feel squishy inside with some words, and some looks and a smile...

“Good. Good thing. Now let’s move. I’d hate to come back later than your noisy manager...”

“You’ll stay also till Monday?”

“I will. Do you have training on Monday?”

“Yes, unfortunately I won’t be able to accompany you at the airport. I am sorry but you’ll have to share also the traveling back with... Sh... with Hinata. The League here starts next weekend and there’s no way I would miss a mock game...”

“I would never ask you to do it, though.”

“I know. But I am still sorry for your... Hinata time. I mean... I can tell him to not bother you but...”

“... but in the end he’ll do what he feels like, am I right?”

As the gates from the villa were passed by, Kageyama had to admit in so many years together, not once he had had the feeling Hinata would be obeying to him just because it had to be done. Sakusa felt irked by the confession. Anything about the bond between the former small player and his own setter was making him livid, that day like it had happened back in high school.

“Looks like the President and Hinata have returned already. The car is over there parked so they must be in.”

“I hope the bath isn’t in common among us. I... don’t want to step in a bathroom where he has been washing himself too...”

“I think we all have a small bathroom in each one of our rooms. Didn’t you check before into yours?”

“No. I thought the other door was a way to unite our rooms and I didn’t want to find Hinata if I had opened it. Good if it’s a bathroom... I’ll take a shower before dinner immediately, if our host allows me.”

Sakusa and Kageyama moved to the sofas saloon, and as they poked their heads into the beautiful room they realized Hinata and the President were not alone in there.  
Somebody was sitting in front of them, as they could see two seemingly very tall men from behind, comfortably placed on the sofa opposite the President’s, and aside Hinata’s pouf couch.

“Oh, you’re back, kids... we were waiting for you...” the President shoot from his place, and moved towards Sakusa and Kageyama, “... I got informed this morning while we were at the winery with Hinata kun that two other valuable guests were coming here this afternoon by your National Team’s Manager...” Kageyama and Sakusa’s eyes went back to the two guests sat on the sofa, as quickly as a lightening bolt “... and I have tried to contact you both, but I knew none of you two is particularly fond of cell phones, and I realized there was no way to tell you before you would be back about this...” as the President was going on with his words, both men surged up from their sitting stance, and made a twist to direct faces to the spiker and the setter.

“O... Oikawa... San...”

“Wakatoshi!” 

The late-coming duo was not able to cover a clear expression of wonder on their bewildered faces; the shock was especially noticeable on Sakusa’s one, because the spiker would generally hide behind a sphinx neutral appearance any feeling, and to catch him suddenly stupefied about anything was indeed an oddity.

On the other side, both Oikawa and Ushijima didn’t seem to mind neither having traveled for hours to be in a place they weren’t supposed to visit, and neither the awkward welcoming from their old acquaintances.

They were standing there, with their usual expressions, monumental and serious the big Ushijima, while Oikawa had his charming level and his natural noble look all polished and stirring, like in any other time he’d be seen anywhere.

They did not act like the fact they were in Italy could feel any sensational at all, either, and after having both nodded to Sakusa and Kageyama they sat back quietly, waiting for the other two to join their ranks.

Feeling that as a way to break the ice, the President suggested to the still unable to move pair to go up and take a brief refreshment before coming back down to have a little talk with the rest of the company:

“... don’t be in any hurry... I convinced Mr. Ushijima and Dr. Oikawa in changing their solution for the night, and they’ll be lodged here as well. We can dine whenever you feel comfortable to, and since I was anyway obliged to please my precious guests in terms of cooking, and I disposed for a Japanese kind of dinner, I can be confident that having two more guests won’t be anything but a pleasure, tonight. Definitely it will be a pleasure for me and hopefully, for all of you, my dear guys.”

Finally shaken from his unforeseen confusion, Kageyama realized he was the one who had to take the initiative to scroll a bit Sakusa as well, so he thanked the President, then formally directed his voice at Ushijima and Oikawa to cheer them, and expressing anticipation for the incoming evening and dinner, he parted from the group taking Sakusa along, inviting with a swaying arm the older guy at climbing the stairs together to get refreshed and ready for the events which were about to happen.

As they started to climb the stairs, refusing the help of the maid whom had been assigned to take care of their needs, Sakusa who was moving through the steps first stopped and murmured an apology to Kageyama.

“Why are you apologizing?”

“My precipitation has brought here Wakatoshi. This is a nuisance for your President and I am so sorry for causing you and him distress...”

Kageyama moved next Sakusa, at the same level as he was, and with mild, pleasant voice he said he had not to worry about that at all.

“My President, if any, is certainly overjoyed to have even Ushijima San here. Trust me, he is. And you would never cause any distress to me. You never had, and you never will. So please... don’t bash your own self with bad thoughts, because tonight will be a very nice night among all volleyball freaks. The kind of nights we do like, don’t we, Kyoomi San?”

Sakusa smiled, and for a little while his hand moonlighted Kageyama’s: he felt he wanted to touch that hand, but then he didn’t. It seemed to him that from it a warm aura could inject and expand something inside the whole of his body and he got scared to go further.

“Yeah. We’ll have a nice night. And then I’ll tell Wakatoshi to not worry, because I am not here to stay.”

“Will you tell also my boss about it?”

“I will. It’s gonna be easier, because the presence of Wakatoshi itself will be a valid reason for justifying my denial to his offer.”

“Ushijima San cares a lot about you...”

“He does. Wakatoshi cares about a few people, but he could do anything for those few. I do care about him too. As I care about Motoya. But... none of them... are you.”

As he was stepping into his room, letting Sakusa going on until hitting his own door, Kageyama smiled tenderly and replied that it was one of the greatest achievements of his life to be of such an importance for him.

“Kyoomi San... until I found you, I never thought I could have been perfectly satisfied tossing for a spiker. Until I found you, despite being in the happy position to be able to toss for many great champions, I always had in me something which was making me feel, looking at a spiker, that I would have not just liked to toss for them forever, but that I would have loved to learn how to spike like them, too **NOTA 1**. But when I have finally gotten the chance to be your setter... looking at you, at the way you fly, and bend and command the ball I send to you... I never once thought I would have tried to do the same. I only thought, and from that moment that still is my sole thought, that I would have loved to toss for you for all the rest of my life, and that it would have felt like the most precious of gifts to me being allowed to do it.”

Sakusa felt his heart jolt inside his chest.  
And he knew he could have waited for Kageyama to be back from Italy for all of his life, because what they were together could not be sewed or damaged by distances or breaks of time.

“Then we feel the same. But this is not a surprise.”

“It’s not. As I said... I look at this like at a precious, like at _the most precious_ of gifts.”

And saying that, Kageyama went to his room, and Sakusa went to his own one too. 

The pre dinner and the dinner went on smoothly and cheerfully, and during the conversations, helped by two professional interpreters whom had been hired for the occasion, Ushijima and Sakusa explained to Kageyama’s President that although they had been impressed by everything they had come to learn about his team and the project he had been invested in with it, it was feeling too much of a complete revolution for their exigences in life to move to a place outside of Japan.

“Kageyama kun, here” said at a certain point Ushijima “has always been way more reckless than the two of us regarding new paths in volley and in anything else. We are... more traditional maybe. But we have learnt to never question what Kageyama deems right. Because if he thinks something can work, it definitely will.”

At the end of that, Ushijima looked at Hinata, and a sort of smile appeared on his always staid face. Hinata noticed, and through a glimpse of his eyes a thankful shine shone on.

“So it’s not for lacking of faith in your project that I am saying no to your generous offer, Mr. President. It’s quite the opposite in fact. Just because I have complete belief that Tobio can accomplish what you want him and your team to obtain, I can fly back to Japan and to mine and Wakatoshi’s team with no regrets. But if I would ever move anywhere other than Japan, I could have only one destination after today. I hope my frankness won’t be taken as an offense. It’s my last wish.”

“Sakusa kun, don’t worry. I appreciate frankness above all other virtues. And I can understand your motivations and your reasons. You could have dismissed me without explaining me anything, but you didn’t, and that is very much appreciated by me. And I hope if one day you do change your mind about staying abroad, well, even if just for one year... my offer still valid. No matter what.”

Sakusa bowed with his head as a testament of trust and gratefulness and from there onwards the whole night went up with talks about culture and history, and with the President eager to inform his guests how his daughter would soon become a classical music star player.

“Your boss is really something, Bakayama... I’ve never seen anyone able to break Ushijima San’s prim attitude so fast...”

“Tendou San does it any day though...”

“Satori San is his manager and his best friend since ages... he doesn’t matter?”

“Oh... so you also don’t matter when one speaks about who’s in my circle of people?”

“Is this a way to compliment me? Because if it is, lemme tell you it sucks. Which is not a surprise, being you... you.”

Kageyama was sitting with Hinata on a single couch, a larger type of couch from the years of the Cold War in Europe, a neat and geometric design which was making the couch look like a soft and low table. As they were speaking, they were both looking at the group of men near the piano, with Sakusa, Ushijima and Oikawa standing around the smaller man like sticks of a fan unfolded.

“Did you know they were coming?”

“Nope. But I might have inadvertently put Satori San on the right track to discover where Sakusa San had been heading.”

“In which way?”

“When I told you about Sakusa’s interview... do you remember? Well I might have spoken a bit with him about it. In hope he would have maybe suggested something like considering a transfer in Italy for Ushijima San too...”

Kageyama scoffed.

“You are the usual dumbass. Ushijima San would never ever play outside of Japan...”

Hinata retorted, all while trying to pinch Kageyama’s thigh, a move which had been used as a torture trick anytime they would quarrel during high school that if one doesn’t try, then of course things cannot change, ever.

“But I wonder why the Grand King came along?”

_I do have a few ideas... but I can’t tell you Sho..._

“I guess Ushijima San asked him, and he came...”

“It makes sense. Ushijima has always had the best opinion of the Grand King after all...”

“You know he hates when you call him that way Sho...”

“Nah, he doesn’t. I think he likes it actually. He puts up a front, but he likes any cool nickname and it’s not debatable that _Grand King_ is one hell of a cool nick...”

Kageyama flopped down on the couch, his arms and legs stretched, and a little yawn escaped his lips.

“Man... I am in need of sleeping. Today has been full. I need to reset.”

“Feeling old at your age? Tsk... You’ve always been an old man in a young man’s body...”

The playful mocking went unanswered by Kageyama and that surprised Hinata. He had to be tired for real.

“Go up and rest. I’ll tell your boss myself. You’re my treasure to protect. I’ll tell him you’re used to sleep like little children do. He’ll believe me... and it’s not far from the truth.”

Kageyama shoot up back in a proper sitting position.

“Will you? I crave a bed. Honestly.”

“Check. I’m on it, go up. Just cheer them now... look, they are all watching us... Hi!!! ... and then move...”

With shambling moves, Kageyama tried to blunder a sort of goodbye to the others... not even sure if they had caught on it or not, feeling finally free to reach a mattress, he moved out of the sofa hall and rushed to his room.  
Mumbling.

“He has not even spoken properly to me for the entire time tonight ... what the hell is he up for?”

But maybe Oikawa was there just to accompany Ushijima, as Hinata had guessed.

Changing to a sweatshirt and pajama pants, Kageyama reckoned he could not read into Oikawa’s mind. It would have been pointless anyway, because in that mind all that he had ever found had been chaos, deceit and fireworks. Bright, beautiful and transient fireworks.

“Whatever... if he’s not going to speak with me normally tomorrow too, I’ll just ask him why he came, and see if he can tell me. Now... it’s time to sleep. I feel like I’ve played 8 full sets today. And I haven’t even touched a ball instead...”

And saying this, Kageyama touched with his hand his lucky charm ball he had brought along also at the villa, and which was laid on the floor just aside his bed. That ball which had been given to him by the man who, at the floor below, was trying his best to look at his most natural, at his most fascinating, at his most indifferent to anyone with blue eyes ever. **NOTE B**

The morning after it had been decided that the day would have been spent by the Japanese guests as a tourist chance.  
The weather was spectacular and Garda Lake was like a beautiful sapphire with millions of sparkly little waves making it twinkle and glow under a full Autumn Sun.

By the time Hinata had joined Ushijima and Sakusa at the table set up for the breakfast, and the President had also come to cheer the company, it got known how Kageyama had already been seen and gotten out to have a morning run session.

“And what about Dr. Oikawa?” Asked the President to nobody especially.

“He went as well running after Kageyama had already gone out. I guess they’ll be back in an hour or so...”

Sakusa had said all very impassively.  
He had just adjusted to his usual personality again, after the random behavior of the precedent day, and Hinata shivered because the usual mood of the spiker was one he had to be afraid of.

“Ah, that guy! He can’t survive without being athletic and performing each day... aah ha! He probably got more exhausted yesterday, doing nothing sporty at all, than today, when he’ll do a training which could kill a normal person like me... Hinata kun... your man is rather unique, aaahhhaa!”

While the amused man was patting Hinata’s back, as a familiar gesture which was making impossible for the short manager to breathe properly, Sakusa began to talk like there was no other in the room to address.  
Like he was speaking to air.

“Wakatoshi, want to see Sirmione Castle with me?”

Taking no hiccup from the sudden addressing, like he was used to that way Sakusa had to start conversations with people, Ushijima promptly answered:

“I’d like to, Kyoomi. Hinata kun, want to come with us?”

Hinata jumped in acceptance while Sakusa’s eyes blanked. But he could not eat his words and it was already too late to find a way to exclude the hyperactive manager from their planning for the day. He would have not expected Wakatoshi’s proactive intention towards the former small ace of Karasuno.

“Maybe Hinata is not fond of going sightseeing though?”

Hinata denied fervently.

“I am down with anything, Sakusa San! Thanx for having me!”

At that point, Sakusa had no more ways to escape his fate.

“Please dear gents, accept to have my driver and car with you. He’s used to roam my guests around the Lake and he speaks many languages. I will remain at the villa today and I don’t need his services...”

Very happy in seeing his guests getting along, the President automatically offered a way for them to enjoy their Italian day more. Generosity was truly a trait of him, Hinata thought with himself.

“But when the others will come back...”

“If they will like to join you, they will reach you wherever you are by with another car. Don’t worry Hinata kun. Enjoy your holiday, and so do you, Mr. Ushijima, and Sakusa. It’s all on me. Let Garda Lake make you fall in love. aaahhhaah!”

Hinata paired that jovially inclusive laugh the President was always so ready to offer with the one of the late coach Nekomata, the lovely old man who had been so important in his life, even without being his coach.

“Okay... Then... why not? Ushijima San... Sa... Sakusa... San.. ?!?”

Ushijima thanked the President for his wonderful gift, and Sakusa minimally nodded along. Hinata would feel shivers all over his back anytime he would try to look at the silent spiker, because he could feel always the hostility the man would direct at him. With years, and certainly due to the requests of Kageyama, Sakusa had ditched the open dislike directed at him, but in many ways that mute and sharp ostracism was feeling even more dangerous, and Hinata was still unable to get what in him could be so unacceptable for Sakusa Kyoomi.

“Then go, my dear guys! Enjoy the beauty of this place and build the sweetest memories of your staying here!”

In thirty minutes Ushijima, Sakusa and Hinata got readied for their tourist day, and went out driven by the chauffeur who had always been very nice to Kageyama.

Around an hour later, steps of two panting men broke the silence in front of the villa main entrance. Stopping their tracks and looking at one another intensively, one couldn’t have told if they had run together or not to reach the big wooden door.  
Oikawa made a move to knock on the doorbell, but as soon as he saw the gesture, Kageyama put out his arm and prevented the older man from doing it.

“Still mute today too?” He inquired, but with a not aggressive tone in his voice.

Oikawa looked for a while at his own feet, then at the arm theatrically extruded in front of him, and puffing and then obliquely observing the younger man aside him, he stated he had not been mute at all that morning.  
He had been preserving his breath for beating him in their run.  
Kageyama’s eyebrows knitted.

“You haven’t beaten me, though.”

“I came here side by side with you. And I am not a professional athlete anymore. So I’d say in more than a way, I beat you this time.”

Remembering how he had tried to not detach Oikawa for the whole of the time they had actually run on the same road that morning, which had happened around the half of his planned route around the park he had traveled around the day before with Sakusa, Kageyama screeched a bit.

“But I was just...”

“There, there, Tobio... don’t be sad. Next time you’ll win. Don’t be the usual dramatic boy...”

How he could appear back as he pleased in his life and so undauntedly mess its balance, Kageyama could not tell.  
But it was what was happening constantly since a while anyway.  
Except that this time he wasn’t up to pass the chaos unmentioned.

“Tooru... stop joking. And tell me why you’re here. I won’t let us step into the villa until I don’t get an answer from you.”

“Always so straightforward, eh, Tobio? Can’t you guess?”

Kageyama didn’t detract his arm from Oikawa’s space.

“I don’t wanna _guess_ , Tooru. I want to know. From your voice.”

Oikawa exhaled again. His skin had already completely regained its natural nuance, unlike Kageyama’s, who was still very red on his cheeks, despite being covered more than Oikawa was.

“Toshi asked me to accompany him here. He was worried about Kyoomi, but he was also... unnaturally agitated. I thought it was safer to have somebody looking after him. And... well, and of course I couldn’t deny to myself that coming along would have meant meeting you.”

Oikawa looked into Kageyama’s eyes. The arm of the taller setter was still blocking him from the door.

“Are you happy I am here, Tobio?”

Kageyama felt a lump in his throat. He didn’t want to admit it, but he was. The light of the well consumed morning was all on Oikawa’s face and as it was revealing his always pleasant to look at features, it was also highlighting a sort of new kind of longing in his chocolate eyes, which was hypnotic and suggestive to him.

“Even admitting that I am, nothing changes. So in the end, it doesn’t matter.”

Unaware of their surroundings, or if they could be seen from either inside or outside the villa, Oikawa grabbed the arm Kageyama was still keeping in front of his chest, squeezed its wrist and jerked it to track it at himself; Kageyama felt pulled hastily and by the time he realized, Oikawa’s lips were already over his.  
And it felt as beautiful as life, to have those lips again.

“Do you _really_ think so?”

Dazed by the kiss, impulsively ignited from Oikawa’s carelessness, Kageyama deepened the union, and felt the other’s strenghts melt into the contact of their tongues, and felt the need, the inarrivabile need, to be one with that man again.

“Come into my room... I give you five minutes. Wait before stepping into the villa. I go first...”

Oikawa nodded, the taste of Kageyama still linger on his lips, and his cheeks newly red by excitement.

Stepping into the villa, Kageyama asked about the rest of the guests, and from the restroom a maid answered how his manager and two other of them had been convinced in touring around the lake by the Master.

“And... where Mr. President is?”

“He’s in his office, the third door down the corridor on the left. Do I have to announce you to him?”

“Oh... no. I will rest a bit in my room. If he comes and ask, please, do tell him we’ll see him in time for lunch.”

The maid looked at Kageyama unsure of his words. Kageyama noticed, but he blamed the fact she was probably not fluent with English.

“Excuse me, Mr. Kageyama... who is the other one I have to tell the Master will be sharing a lunch with you two?”

Kageyama realized his mistake. Damn his excitement... And it was almost time for Tooru to step in too...

“Ah... well... I think I have seen Mr. Oikawa... behind me on my running path... In case I was right... maybe he wants to have lunch here as well?”

The maid thought that Kageyama’s insecurity was probably due to his not perfectly fluent English, and decided to agree despite her unconvinced self.

“I will ask Mr. Oikawa as soon as he returns then. Do you need some personal for taking care of your rest, Mr. Kageyama?”

Kageyama shook his head, and thanking the lady, he went upstairs.

His heart was beating way too fast for a few stairs jumps.

“And so here I am, back in hell thanx to him...”

The whispered sentence wasn’t even finished, and Oikawa was in his room.  
A brief mutual glance, and then the urge of touch got the best of both young men.  
Almost violently, grabbing his neck with one hand, Kageyama pinned Oikawa down on the bed, and began to kiss and undress him, like his whole life could depend on the nakedness of the older man.  
Oikawa, from his part, was muffling out the kind of moans some people never get to emit nor hear for their entire lives, the kind of pleasured spills of cut voice only the very skilled touch of some other people can induce.

“Don’t... you care... if someone hears us... Tobio...”

“Nobody’s at this floor. All the rooms are made. And I asked for rest... nobody will come...”

Oikawa bounced under the insisted pressure of Kageyama’s fingers in his below regions, and another delighted sound escaped his lips.

“Sometime, you are even more skilled than I am at schemes... Tobio...”

Kageyama would have wanted to assert that he was _generally_ better than him at schemes, but looking up at the aroused face of Tooru, he couldn’t open his mouth other than to taste Oikawa’s erection and precum.

“Shut up... and come for me...”

Letting the first spill of Oikawa’s come trace down from his mouth and neck, Kageyama used the rest to lube his dick, working it and Oikawa’s entrance with an alacrity which was matched by an all-considering and attentive care.  
Each quiver Oikawa would make, each move from his body, each one of his breaths, Kageyama would weigh up and down, accordingly slowing down or fasten up his gestures to give the other the maximum satisfaction and the minimal pain.

“I am ready... don’t hold back... I am ready...”

And at the request, at the sound of Oikawa’s voice which was so magically in between a beg and an order, Kageyama would connect their bodies; strong, desirous pushes would rhythmically pound Oikawa down and down on the mattress, tears streaming with joy from his eyes, and his arms all tightened around the wide back of Tobio.  
And as the connection would produce the release, the embrace would tighten even more, because what Oikawa was loving above it all in their sexual matches was to have his junior’s seed invading his whole self.

“Stay in a bit more... die within me... like this...”

For a while they remained soundless, a pair of well built bodies garbled together.  
Then catching back their breaths, they would play with their dismissed pieces of clothing to cover their exposed parts just to reveal them again.

“Let’s take a shower?”

“Wait... I don’t wanna part yet from your body...”

“We can stay near in the shower... it’s a cramped space...”

But Oikawa wouldn’t allow Kageyama to leave the messed up bed.

“I was thinking earlier how Chibi Chan is still a very wonderous monster... he was able to push Toshi to take a trip in a place he has no idea of whatsoever...”

“You mean this Lake?”

“Yeah... the maid below answered my curiosity about why he had gone out without me...”

“Jealous?”

“No: surprised. But we’re talking about Chibi Chan... I am still not sure if he’s human or not...”

Caressing Oikawa’s lower back to ease his post coital stress, Kageyama told Oikawa he shouldn’t call Hinata in such a patronizing way, to which he replied the red haired was still addressing him as “Great King”, so he had all rights to do as he pleased.

“After we will lunch with the President... want to toss for me, Tooru? I need to train a bit more and I’d love to spike some...”

Oikawa chuckled.  
Only Kageyama would be in charge of suavely massage the lower back of a lover after abusing said lover’s ass, and at the same time being as hands on as ever with his plan of dominating volley courts worldwide.

“If any, I shall be the one asking for your tosses, stupid...”

Kageyama’s palm stopped right over the round curve of Oikawa’s round buttocks.

“But you...”

Oikawa put his hand over Kageyama’s and started to move it back, expressing that way his will to have him keeping the massage effective.

“What? Are you scared I can’t jump to impact your sets? Oh, please... do I look like somebody who doesn’t practice jumps anymore? This ass... these legs... do they look flaccid to you?”

Kageyama, reprising the massage, felt a tiny overwhelmed, but in a very comfortable way.

“You look in great shape...”

“Of course I do! Tsk... I’ll let you know that even if I left competitive sports, I keep training with Toshi quite often. And you have also to know that I regularly serve, spike and...”

Squeezing Oikawa’s ass the way he knew he’d like it more, Kageyama stole his breath with a kiss and then concluded in his place the sentence:

“... and toss, right? So please... do that for me too. There’s a little gym in this villa’s garden... I checked it yesterday. There are balls and everything we need. I miss the feeling of touching a ball you have tossed...”

At that, Oikawa felt won over. 

“Ok. Ok... I’ll do it for you then, Olympic Champion...”

Kageyama tensed a little, his face turning grey.

“I am not one, tho...”

“You are. Idiot.”

Kageyama’s hands had retracted from Oikawa’s ass and body.

“I am not. I’m just a medalist. We didn’t win...”

Oikawa cupped Kageyama’s face in his hands, which were still larger than those of his kohai despite Kageyama had been taller and bigger than him since his third year in Karasuno, and pressed his cheeks to make his tension fade out.

“You still sulk for that? You are such a kid, Tobio chan. So, even if your medal wasn’t a gold one, does it mean it’s not something amazing that you’ve done in Tokyo? Has it to be or gold or none? Don’t be such a sore loser, damn... because ban you, I can tell you this with complete confidence, what the rest of the world sees when reminding themselves of you in your Japan uniform on that court, with that medal adorning your neck, is the image of an Olympic Champion. A stupid, but incredible, Olympic Champion...”

Kageyama averted his eyes a bit.  
Oikawa was pouting, waiting for a sort of comeback from him, still with his hands on Tobio’s cheeks. It was more a caressing presence than a squeezing menace, the way his palms were still hovering over the younger’s skin.

“You still do this...”

“Do what, Tobio chan? Put some salt into your void brain?”

Kageyama’s eyes shot back into Oikawa’s, and the latter felt his heartbeat skip.

“No. You still inspire me. I thought this would end once you stopped playing but apparently... not. Thank you, Tooru.”

Gently putting his hands covering those of Oikawa he had on his face, Kageyama moved them out and in front of his mouth and started to kiss them from inside.

Oikawa’s heart kept dancing in his chest.

“Can I ask you another favor, other than the tosses for this afternoon?”

With eyes lidded of tenderness, Oikawa mumbled he could.

“Please... look out a bit for Sakusa San when you’ll be back in Japan. He... needs to feel people around him. Discrete, yet interesting and smart people.”

“And then why he seems so attached to you? I see no smart men in this room excluding the great myself...”

“Please, Tooru...” Kageyama’s eyes were demanding seriousness more than his voice, and Oikawa commended stopping his playful banter “... I really need to be assured somebody will take care of him. It’s not like he needs something specifically. I can’t even explain... but I know that you can give him a bit of what he needs, because you are still a great setter, and setters do have to care and protect their aces. You’ll find a way to understand what you can do for him, in your own way, as long as you look after him. I have no doubts you can.”

Oikawa put both his hand palms in front of Kageyama and asked for more kisses. After the kisses, he would have maybe agreed to take a detached interest in the oddities of Sakusa Kyoomi, just for his beloved junior’s sake and tranquillity.

“Thank you. Time for showering now?”

“Make way...”

Moving out of the bed, Kageyama waited for Oikawa to follow him, but realizing the other hadn’t put foot on ground, he turned and watched him sat on the bed.  
He was looking sorrowful.

“Tooru?”

“Say, Tobio... do you feel fine now that you’ve escaped from me?”

Kageyama stunned in place.  
That had to come, and he had expected it. The question.  
The real reason which had brought Oikawa in Italy.

“I did not escape from you. I tried to explain to you that I don’t see things that way, and I stand by what I once said. And yes... I feel fine here. And I hope that now you can also feel fine where you are, with your _wife_ and your life in Japan.”

Oikawa’s head turned as fast as a whiplash and his eyes injected with fire poked straight into the blue orbs of Kageyama:

“Feeling fine? Me? How can you think I may feel fine this way?”

Oikawa was trying not to scream, but his coarse and repressed yelp was hurting Kageyama more than a shouting cry would have.

“If you are not happy, then I am sorry. I never meant to make you unhappy.”

“Oh dear... are you insane? Are you... what? Did you escape here for the sake of Nanako? Do you still feel the blame for what we had behind her back?”

Kageyama tried to answer in his calmest manner. He tried to find the patience to say again things he already had to Oikawa, but he was starting to feel the pressure of the situation. Oikawa was behaving like a spoiled child. His truest form.

“Tooru... you know what I did has nothing to do with Nanako. You know, I don’t see things that way. I don’t feel any blame. I am not the one betraying a spouse? My way to deal with relationships is to be fully available for what I think it’s worthy, and it’s not for the sake or for the demise of others... I just do it for myself. I can only do it for myself. It’s like in volley... I can’t control others. But I can connect with others, and then others will choose themselves what to do with what I connected along...”

Oikawa sighed.

“Oh, look what I have done... By helping you becoming a no tyrannical king on court, I unleashed also a powerful and sensual demon who tramples on others’ feelings without even reckoning them. He thinks he sets his subjects free, in life like on court, and he cannot even see the subjects are dying from his indifference to their sufferance.”

Kageyama tried to move a step in Oikawa’s direction, but got stopped by Oikawa’s gesture to not approach him.

“Tooru... I may not understand, like you say... I may not _see_ what it seems so easy to be seen... but one thing I do know for sure, and that is I am not doing anything to make you or anyone else suffer. What do you want me to do? Keep your act intact? What should I have done? Look... you came, and once again I couldn’t resist you. As you couldn’t resist me. But... does this truly make you happy?”

Oikawa started to silently weeping, and seeing tears on his face broke Kageyama’s stance, and he moved immediately on the bed by his side. Bending Oikawa’s head to rest on his chest, caressing his hair, he let him release his frustration, without judging the tears of a man.

“I am. I am happy with you. I have been happy in coming here. I have been happy united with you, before like any other time we did it together...”

“Tooru... then... are you happy with your life with Nanako?”

Oikawa nodded into Kageyama’s chest, which was heavier and in need of a break.

“This is what I can’t get, Tooru. How can you be happy in both things? They contradict one another. They... can’t stay together, and even though I am in no position to ponder or explain... because I have no idea about these things... the same I think you can’t be happy doing it with me and then be happy in being with Nanako like you are a perfect family...”

Oikawa embraced Kageyama.

“Tobio... do you love me?”

“No. I told you already. I admire you, I feel attracted to you, I look for you since I was a kid and I trust you more than most... but all this can’t be love...”

“And what makes you so sure it isn’t?”

Kageyama caressed Oikawa’s back.

“You did. Remember when years ago we found ourselves in Kitagawa Daiichi and I told you about Alisa? You told me something then which has really hit me. You told me love is to put another one before ourselves, always. And then, from then... I do know if that’s true, and I feel it is, then I’ve never loved anyone...”

Oikawa looked at him, asking with eyes for a kiss.  
A long, deep and meaningful kiss.  
A marvelous kiss.

“And I fear you also have never loved anyone, Tooru...” Kageyama was spilling each word out with slow and burning voice. His eyes into Oikawa ones, and their bodies ready to merge again “... because both me and you are putting ourselves in first place in all that we do. I put ahead of anything else my volley desire, which is the only thing I really care for... and you... you...” Oikawa was fumbling with Kageyama’s balls and the man was newly feeling growing in his wants for the former senpai “...I don’t know what it is that you put ahead and before than all the rest but one thing I know for granted, is that is something which has to do only with yourself and no one else. Not Nanako... and not even me...”

And by saying those words Kageyama and Oikawa started all over to be one again, while the clock was informing them that it was already midday, and they had not even taken a shower after their run outside the villa in that beautiful, sunny Sunday on Lake Garda.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> **Shadow Mountain** is the meaning of "Kageyama" in Japanese
> 
> **Valknut or Hrungnir's Heart** in the Eddan myths of Northern Europe, the legend says Hrungnir had a tri-pointed stone as a heart.
> 
> **The love Japanese have for Italy** is well known and testified by the fact the wide majority of Japanese people state to have as first dream destination for traveling in their life the European Country. Many essayes have been written about this preference.
> 
> **Grottoes of Catullus** is the name given to the ruins of a Roman villa which was built at the end of the 1st century B.C. and the beginning of the 1st century A.D. at the northernmost end of the peninsula of Sirmione on the southern shore of Lake Garda. 
> 
> **NOTE A, B** Events and notations which belong to the Okurimono saga set up, in any of the parts which preceed this chapter.
> 
> **NOTE 1** Kageyama's love for trying to imitate not only setters he sees, but aces as well, is canon-ly stated when he affirms he'd like to learn to spike like Ushijima in the Shiratorizawa match.

**Author's Note:**

> Fourth part of my Kageyama's dedicated Universe.
> 
> The Adult Days.
> 
> Full of all those things young Kageyama may have never wished upon.  
> Or maybe NOT.
> 
> To understand how the series works, please, refer to its notes in the main page.
> 
> Feel free to correct my English as many times as you like; it's not my first language so I am still learning it.


End file.
